Jim Leftwich
The Feathered Sun
and the
Ghostful of Holes
... not since late in the third quarter of the twentieth century...
I remember — half-aware for a change, just now, of the invention involved in what we normally accept as simple memory — a poet I much admired telling me, not long before he died, to hold on and attend tightly to his late works of collage and text/image juxtapositions, because they might be important, or have some other nonmonetary value, and in either or any case there would be no more of them, and that in itself could be enough to extend their care across some time.
I of course agreed with his assessment and have done what I was able to do, though I can't claim to be happy or even comfortable with all of the results.
Syntax, at least, can hold at arm's length the felt presence of an unwelcome idea.
You, both known and unknown reader, might be expected to experience the entire spectrum of judgements and speculations, when shifting and shaping a personally desirable constellation of collective failures.
I, by the time I am done with this (and that), will have given fully the flesh and ghost of my own porous under-standing.
For now, the door is propped slightly open, and there's a light on down the hall. Make yourself at home. Stepped out for a loaf of bread, or something, who can pretend to know?
Oxbow
Colorado River
02.12.2023
Eternal Crayons of the Inner OnionJim Leftwich writes:Apex avant alphabets 3 verb nightshadow vertiginous volatility torqued vertex between Telesterion and batting average Yearly divided By nine & six & three 5 in one none in 5 nous minus 6 none new nous the 6 centered on the 5 murmurs of 6 or one half dozen of another Ievels of ongoing bruise kiss your ass goodbye onion kimono oilcloth piano pincers stroll poem 9 lives Ultraviolet Yam 5 under tones nor pulchritude cusp of hibiscus Rags to ribbons big green greed einkorn ebbing Seamless bracelets escutcheon wherein jumbled shut short sunken junk suit kinetic doormat kindling darkless drumroll instigates origami Tipping pointless Two parts Of the 3 trap Truncheon Pistil Trebuchet botanical Roseate wrapping If glacial, then melting Emit psychosomatic Undue wavering Wavicles quizzical Quondam Yearning A quantum gambit augmented grapes catapult holster high school sac Of dEtermination Juniper Denial Kitchen in sync Fluffy flyovers lupine & lupine between the fires sling, hummingbird aurora Visigoth in Zenobia buzzards across blizzard wax North Virginia Waxing Natch Spex, specks Like a fly on The wallpaper Muttered statements like Fried coins of Loss Muted verbs like fried Bananas of Loss Mutated dogma Like Refried beans of loss double Both two times Gritty Rite Yes, well, House But not Frank, If you must know. Wish your ash Counterweight Goodbye ourselves A goodbye Lingers Yourself Triumphantly Rejoicing by way of Their jagged Ears forgotten fogs of the Fig Broken smoking Runes Cream of Litmus nose Erasure on unicorn Paper extreme crayon Cigarette of the Frogs triple dust accumulates undercover in duplex cupboards drifting gulfs of spring mash Pyrocumulus air cups Upwards updrafts Gulping ash & smote Five Vernacular riverrunes deflated by Variorum fiGHt Back Winging shift Bastion of Toenails true DeFenseless boomerang gorte on the haunch jumping flashing Termites sky-fishing Juniper Moonlight sky-jumping the Outer Ubiquities of the Inner Fire Escape (perched (Inscape) rink & brim) turtle-sky Moonlit highways jumping inner Knoll Juniper dripping Hints Curvier rim and brink of Quiets wheelbarrow rye typhoon the riot in a Teaspoon ryeot In a teadoom Bunkers ripple flint Gulf of Suchness shoes around the Horn brackish unexamined gifthorse Volume Of the Night Binary miXed mEdia on imaginary screen paper figuratively agile Herbivorous City of Vile Coin forgotten for a mile Just in time grab them by the Inventory Knowingly yak smack quack Yucca muck a windrow Inkling of the Gone fold 'em down & Beat Sumiink music On laurel bark Boxwood jockeying Oxbow goiter Fishhooks toe mask Jettison identify iDeNtity jostled works & blood Interlocking directorate Focus group Steering committee rote Gear gibberish in Hieroglyphs Jockeying Kore Yesterday umlaut orchids Undermining intransigence poem Tree Romanticist Frenetic fuel Factory knitting Freelance Homework grinning like a Bear near Zaporizhzia dEFeNestrated everevenafter towards Future funnels compendium brightness blunders gerrymandered funhouse ninja HudDLEd muddying The golden waters hiding Jewels in Dentistry jumping the Gun Going to the Desert To study cactus With the Snakes duly corvid tributaries ghoats gosted Tragedy of the Uncommon Tributaries It being lt Being was human in the 21st century sheepshank thru tibia Rubicon huckleberry truckle heimarmene heresiarch unity bursa unify the usual onions finished ill-lit lightning yohimbine-blue thinking mythic turtles jumping like beans in deeply hidden heaps (heaps) bard berd bird bord burd byrd wall well will woll wull wyll bard woll bord wall berd will burd well bird wyll byrd will Bird William take these Birds Away Because we cannot Be Asked for whom The Birds sing Mr. Bird Willie Take these birds Away from me Eagle strait to be denounced targeted Birdbaths gullible birthdays unlike Off-Kilter unitary incline undulating Leverage Iip Pupil Upper Pop unsullied Pus Usury pus Uptown pointy little Playthings purple puppies portable Segue Eternal Reward Akashic discard Agrarian aspic raVen groceries Varoom I Remember Copper verbs rule the world Tea Proverb —— Squelch Scorching Hinge Advent ave of Ambiguity 13th Floor Ventilator Seven types of Elevator 87 per Cent of their In Spection certifi Cates out of da Te: Date on wh Ich sliced brea D was invented : July 7, 1928 openly opening Yin and Yang go fishing. That's what they said. It's in an interview. Yin and Yang go fishing and they catch a poem. One poem on two hooks. So, yes, that's what you tell them when they ask you, how do you do it. You tell them, Yin and Yang went fishing. You read it in an interview. Hawk truss trust Hat in The ring of fire haggled half-off still life knife book can book teabag book fire pit book fork book napkin book leaf book envelope book spoon book table book mosquito book book pocket poem in the side pocket Parsed cylindrical surfaces Vocable marks Virtuoso science surfiction Bambi Gnarls Grit Hand mane Handle To trap small birds moJo Mojave sunrise mirror-Haunted sands The Hammer-Mirror handkerchiefs of consciousness Did and Did then Did All the Wavering earlobes Quenching Warfare equations With Arkestra Quickening The Wobbly Rail rewinding Wounded red winking Ear Roots Parsed copper Balloon Capital scorched covert half-Grit Parsed lithium Balloon capital scorched Covert half-Spit Parsed Liquid natural gas Ball Loon capital scorched How do you spell orthography? Is orthography a spell? Is Fuk Speling witchcraft graffiti? Read what thou wilt is the curse of the Law. i said: this is what a poem about the end of the world looks like. he said: oh, i didn't know that. i said: you're welcome. Out in the inner West Our imbricate Pelagic micronutrients internecine NecroPolitical Flurry of Fascinations oligarchs bipedal Beastoids vulnerability backwards curved television beans Vacuum cleaner doors Vicissitudes sliding doors Finitude Sign-waves goodbye footstools goodbye Feet Fetishized waving from Another shore drowning In the vacuum between Our years cyborg ranked choice voting badminton subletteral asyntactic grammar Dogs and Dragons Forever Semiotic symptomatic As Far as the eye can See sea rider C-Watt You're half done disappointment. birdlime. broccoli. Frilly grunts God's butler dwindles fugitive Balloon Wiggles waffle waggle Gills on a grunion dapples furtive Gulls twig in pelican teeth gulf of gifts Defenestrate the cause! buffoon agitates giggles at the baffles buffers flagged & flagellated Hold my hart my pores Tired harp fold me Nouns leftovers stark Go Forth DeFenestrated zenith hat let zenith hat albumin in bumlight hat trick band aid gap napping flappers Jack cap flipping hips Grip ripe epic ictus Each beach breeched Pits Each peach Wrench wrinkled Winch since pencils Pinching each weekdays are for wasting Work axis of waxed axles cumulative accumulation xeric aquatint extrapolate axioms from a seme Minor celestial corpus Zinc in Crisis zawn in Corpuscle voicing uxorious vocables in axiom curvature of the verbs coil of diphthongs cranial detours dashboard cognition embedded grid embattled rattles embouchure slurp cement poems worlds backwards Engrained rainbow diametrical meters ravine terrine roots of the toes route of thumb tsimtsum reverberations Gargle with Fire forged in Golden grammars of forgetfulness fictions of grimoire and ngram ruminations louvered headroom curated lemniscate fueling station with low ceilings and high expectations otherpostotherneostream poetries, No. avantpostothergardestream poetries, No. opposing thumbs up poetry i and I is an us Emblematic codex Werther's Original Wurthering Sleights of Memories at hand argyle amniotic alembic alkahest athanor sideswipe Shekinah squirrels splooting beneath the Heat Dome affinity group think logarithmic reproduction of failure to appear closer than they are sociopolitical modalities of avalanche and subduction depending on the red barrel of wheels and fins falling from the skyhook in the ceiling cunning & uncanny depending on the doorknobs cut with bronze daffodils & catnip drooping catheters enchanted and/or ebullience and/or ecstatic and/or everyman and/or cleaning products With chemical Enigmas cobbLEd Decemberists & decals Drumrole Playing in the Cities of the Night with the Children of The Future we never were everywhere evening wear errors of ramification errors of remuneration tarot rotting Trappists triangulated Yes mantle Typhoonery tulips with no tip toe Year Of the Catchall Under the sliced Bread Sky _______________________ Midword: Niht Ligt Poems are causal agents. My poems write me. How to become a poet: 20 years of training in the art of autodidacticism, followed by 30 years of research. Take notes. Write tens of thousands of poems. Don't imitate yourself. Listen to everybody, all the time, but don't let anybody tell you what to do. Trust is extremely important, even when it isn't naive and dangerous. There is no such thing as a comfort zone for a poet, there is only experiential doubt, uncertainty spread unevenly among the laws of probability. Questions of form belong to ]designers and engineers; questions of content belong to psychologists and historians. Poets are not philosophers; the poem is only interested in itself (critical thinking is subjective and context is a disinformation campaign). Containing multitudes is only the beginning. Disjunction is a choice, like intentionality, or expressivity. Read Technicians Of The Sacred. Every poem thinks it is the universe in a grain of sand. It's a hard notion to argue with, but I trust you to make the effort. Nevada September 2022 _______________________ Purity of the sensorium Optimism of the broken heart Pessimism Of the brokered Tongue Impurity is proprioceptive In the impure Nonsense Of the Heart dirt feathers Beauty flivvers beast fibonacci Fattened Geese buttery Forked Book definitive Bastardization flattened rib bone Beach grease for the Bums of the Gods gutter fried Broken Books five rivers Beaten Down on the padded path forgotten Ballrooms Of the Dead distributive fast Bald Food on the doorbell first served As So, So As sizzling swivels Door Sash dash boot Das Boat Bogie the Cheese Shield the day Mr. Bird-Willie, Bird-Willie Take these birds away from me I can't sing myself in circles anymore whistling the whiffles we were younger than that Flew anew Renew the coop rewind the wind Crew blue in two reckon down the thin Bacon and legs All my wigs are broken rougher lip onion pig opera oil on the Pig parrots of a Loveable Ocean parroting the Oceanic Guerilla Lovefare jokerman lung by the Juice of the Known Less than rejoice the joist more or less than moral oral lesson then jackals of the Lost jiffy knack Large Jouissance Lupine and lollipops infinite coPpEr oiL kilter no more Encapsulates Melancholic Chopping blockade Nibbling on a bicycle foG of class war we electrified everything Emergent autonomous flesh Tadpoles with tambourines emit Water insecurity gargle with evil histories highless Sir, Surothersurstream Poetries, No. nccn neoconservative clay pigeons nocturnal chirping Utopian bastion of ephemeralized eupsychic wormhole writing against itself Enjoy the ecstasy of the day Angular angels angles of the angelic angels askance angels askew big bad buttery boring betting angels First betting angels Best buttery angel Grab bag gestalt Gratuitous & Hungry Hungry, Jittery, knowing lingering long in lungs if known, no Noun if only, only ersatz travail darkness in a spoon at bit cent dent eat flint fit flick hit hint it jilt kin kilt knit lit lint mint not nut out pit pith quit quilt rat rut rot sit sat tilt teeth us use vat vote was wash we coax box hoax yes your my zen zenith zilch slaughter laughter. revokable vocable. invoke ajar. efflux oyster amok. rethink twinkling ink frolicking adjacent. askew votive jellies. flock of doors. jimmied the clock drinking moonflowers. knit the locks and feed them doors. milky way starkly veers. embellished orange ears raven over empty river. due during adjustments. nerve of jetties. femur if foliage. retinue to unglued. rule of July Whispered atmospheric crisscross eiderdown rootbound graywacke erstwhile rhythms we utter intuitively hewn ingle xeriscaped nightblooms knead the djinn June in dinner skits jolting kabob heap Loaf of Lions unwilling eke abjured interstellar rewind abscond abyss auscultation A culture of canonical slurry pox in a box azalea, alfalfa copper armies of the nitrogen capers "they will not cook themselves" Amortized American alfalfa ambrosial azure aesthetic anaesthesia amerced episteme eidolon, colophon I know Use for it. otheralterstream poetries, No. subotherstream poetries, No. I Use It Four Know Fuse Us, Yes. skewered peppers originate drift hoarse in the jaw dirt & dispatches from the soundboard of a fire All my eggs Are legs all My figs are Wigs all my Eggs are wings All my fugues Are glue (glue) Br oke N Brrr oke nnn Batch fine wine mine nine supine taurine urine entwined riverine Bone marrow duobolical five Vines On the dime fluttering Nickels in the wind Snatch such twinkling Slivers Of Biblical Hivemind Vernacular Mind bediamonded forth in lorries the beribboned victors PoX upon Their verbal Easter Bunnies heritage nominal in fins & gills vector of Rib and Boneless Vortex porcine vulpine corvine bovine aquiline porcupine caprine asinine gabardine aubergine hairline canine iodine wolverine devine brine equine ursine feline orpine passerine kine zine ravine peregrine There are no straight lines in nature. There are no nouns in nature. There are no straight lines in nouns. Nature is a noun. gyres jumbled Young Under Mountains if Yellow then Milk high-jumping Koan itching jeer Political if Orange, then olives in an oil spill yeast under MYtH of Dialectics Naturally bridging dirt PoX LungFish zig zags Broken dagger Groaning Fever Eucharistic Worms Grew Riveting rumors Anew in Tumultuous expressivity typeset rewarding tEaMWork breech of typefish The jagged Ledge Self-fishers fish cut grappler Bait Grunt fish jump-cut mucus Tangerine jackknife Trim rigs germane tightening Gash gosh gasp recumbent & Rash birch bench Barge Each urge rotation vermilion vocational Caboose finagled carbon Moose of the King Mingled in the sluice marbles mumbling House Of Jones of Johnson knit them in Their Underwear Fit to nearly herit Ianguished Under anguish knoll rolling rolling under ill-gotten grains Iipids Oil spill spOiIed pilfered tOil and Lumber Raining knots jumping krill jumping Moles hidden in their pajamas adds spiffy to their syllabus aerosol birds if pray in the dreaming Gas light stiffly ruffled shuffling self-actualized facticity as aspen an apron map squabble pander goon squad of one Fight fight flight as above, so beef low Curvature of the Verbs bitter baffled the Head cheese waltz night on Scalded Mountain twin Nights twined entwined EnDgame doctrinal Yam yak urbane ilk yucca imp & umpire urges ingot orts incremental ostrich pine inked orbits occidental pitch Given waterfalls Knob & Bend veins broth nub vouch brine vowels of the birds zouk no sax quicksand in a movie quail feathers winking quagmire edible waltz eligible wattage eagle I-beam tide pools, tide pools Sun Drowning all day Don't let the Sun go Down on my Chicken coop Bawk Bwak Bwak Bwak Bawk Bwak advance dance of the broken arm fandango with Fantomas the Phantom Mask of the Ostrich autonomous faction strategies gatekeepers sleepwalking get them behind thee dharma bumper stickers driftwood down the river on glacial flour to the sea jauntily ajar ghoulish succotash growling Zenobia lone hours Foodish Barnyard, Grocery Store, Dinner Table fables of Faubus among other critical theories north of tibwa North of feet & anklets Moments momeats mominced batch Meander botch & catfish latch boom on the Nibble PoX & Coax Coax & PoX exploits Pox of Zest Variant daimon flux Aphorisms on the horizon Sky if sky under skies outer skin if under skins Albeit confident younger than we are U-Turns infinite indifference dauly Tineless Year By year Timeless daily normalized berm batten the Beans normalization of go-between Norms Go ahead and Go Headed West Going going goan On the HighWaY To hEEL The Carrots of Georgie replete with Toes in Harmony WHY must they be All the Beauty In the Sea? uTiLiTY uNRULy & FRee Sitka Spruce salmonberry Black-tailed deer queries in wonderment quaking winterized we quicken on the egg we quench unengined quiver eternal weeds we sliver enwrenched rakes emplundered Want Big-leaf maples Western hemlocks Pelicans puffins gulls Auto destructive art / Moon Ok then moon / thin Moon thinking / Think moon / No, moonfinger, finger / The Finger writing the word "moon" / Then pointing at The word / Thin thinking, If moon, then "moon" / Moon dance in two aids mutual daze sizzles Convex Zebra zebra convex citizens of zen-vex Zoon Chicken Sox once apron a thyme poems are eggs Frozen in a pipe if only I had a cricket Jitters Kitchen jambalaya kittens luck of the jewel in a knot like the celebrated Jumping Kite jalopy of oatmeal tattoo UnHundred Knox bully beans vitamin Insisting On pianissimo pie on the skylight yes optional Sun eight pillows universal salaried gaiety seize Urchin billowing half tones on the shell game of eyes & sails yet and true True to the Rust rewound the wounds Sleep never weaves equality walks the plankton in As is Doable, so is done Femtoseconds Durable Suds digital flowers fake the sun Ghoats lost in jeLLied kNack kilometer meat jelly until the yen yearning under treelined Coax & PoX / proof of Recreation / verbatim verbosity / viscosity Of Biscuits / Never The Nether weather Nounal Hemisphere Figuratively eight Ball / snide packet blunders into thunder a rumor in their roomOlympic Peninsula Summer 2022
The Feathered Sun
and the
Ghostful of Holes
... not since late in the third quarter of the twentieth century...
I remember — half-aware for a change, just now, of the invention involved in what we normally accept as simple memory — a poet I much admired telling me, not long before he died, to hold on and attend tightly to his late works of collage and text/image juxtapositions, because they might be important, or have some other nonmonetary value, and in either or any case there would be no more of them, and that in itself could be enough to extend their care across some time.
I of course agreed with his assessment and have done what I was able to do, though I can't claim to be happy or even comfortable with all of the results.
Syntax, at least, can hold at arm's length the felt presence of an unwelcome idea.
You, both known and unknown reader, might be expected to experience the entire spectrum of judgements and speculations, when shifting and shaping a personally desirable constellation of collective failures.
I, by the time I am done with this (and that), will have given fully the flesh and ghost of my own porous under-standing.
For now, the door is propped slightly open, and there's a light on down the hall. Make yourself at home. Stepped out for a loaf of bread, or something, who can pretend to know?
Oxbow
Colorado River
02.12.2023
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