from the archives — a page from last year

I won't take credit for any of this no fudging behind this line of cars and the train's not budging
file:///C|/Documents and Settings/writes/no fudging.txt1/18/2007 12:40:47

file:///C|/Documents and Settings/alloy/writes/poem for CB.txt
your poems put me in mind of cannibalism for C.B.
how I do I get into your head and say, "Now I'm Charles Bernstein, what I have to say is what I say." from now on, it isn't going to matter what I say or how it comes. how do I get. maybe teaching or graphomania are the only proper devotions. you out of my head. but the one question I truly want to ask is: are you a calm person?
file:///C|/Documents and Settings/alloy/writes/poem for CB.txt1/18/2007 12:40:47

file:///C|/Documents and Settings/alloy/writes/spiritual
crisis -- or just heartburn.txt
Maybe, maybe... I've been ditching our rabbi's Midrash class on Thursday nights for some time now -- I feel guilty about this because of the social
obligation regular attendance of events like this creates, but spiritually I've lost the ball in the ceiling lights...
What's going on is that I have lost my faith in cycles, and the idea of first/second comings of a Messiah figure indicates a belief that the cycle will bear utopian fruit... if we wait long enough. As Jean-Luc Godard said, "my work is the train, not the station, because I am no longer waiting."
In my case this means I've got itchy feet. Maybe I'll miss
the arrival of
the Kingdom of God/World to Come because I had to go
outside and stretch my legs.
file:///C|/Documents and Settings/u0036695/Desktop/alloy/writes/
spiritual crisis -- or just heartburn.txt1/18/2007 12:40:47

when Azazel comes out of the wilderness

when Azazel comes out of the wilderness
when it comes with horns, and the crowd chants
over the side of the mountain it comes

then the priest who stands in new raiments
then the horns of the attendants are wailing against stone
like the host arrayed in battle, clashing spear on shield

throw Azazel back to the desert rocks. tie its horns with string
throw the goat back into the wilderness. let it fall on sharp rocks
let all the sins of this wicked people perish with animal’s death.

the people are apart, they need a sacrifice to be purified
the people are excellent, all they need now is something to die for them
and the blood washes ground in some lonely place. red string turned white

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

the people are apart, to be purified they need a sacrifice
when it comes with horns, and the crowd chants

when Azazel comes out of the wilderness
then the priest who stands in new raiments

over the side of the mountain it comes
like the host arrayed in battle, clashing spear on shield

throw Azazel back where it came from. tie its horns with string
the people are excellent, they need something to die for them

let all the sins of this wicked people perish with the animal’s death
then the horns of the attendants against stone

throw the goat back into the wilderness. let it fall on sharp rocks
and the blood washes in some lonely place. red string turned white

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


throw Azazel back where it came from. tie its horns with string
the people are excellent. they need something to die for them

throw the goat back into the wilderness. let it fall on sharp rocks
and the blood washes in some lonely place. red string turned white

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

were we both participants?
if you ask the question in the right way, you forget where the doubt came from

1/22/07

hieroglyphs

st. paul : Prairie Home Contaminated

(written for — but not submitted to — the 2008 St. Paul Almanac)

1

observers of a cool autumn were just about as lucky as me.
the gilt along Snelling, trails up to where you sat on a tractor
at the Fair, or ate sweet corn we got from corner vendors.

the place you told me about, the place is in my hands from this height.
and outside every window at home is a view out to Highland Parkway.
the river and trees were turning yellow-gold like corn in your mouth.

the sky was flecked with clouds after a daydream. looking up
at the water tower, at the highest point, I thought this was the place
last October, and that it had turned out exactly right, for walking.

2

it takes time, it is incredible: four seasons
shrunk on your back porch, with Northern Lights skating around the block.

we haven’t seen tornados for a witch’s age, haven’t taken down
the banners and flags from the Fourth, when

all of us were celebrating the river and what it brought this place,
looking sort of surprised because it’s been around here the longest.

well that’s what holidays are. so long as the air’s dry
and hot and we have bugs swarming lightposts, and it’s sky like that

one shivers only when you’re looking up. from Lock & Dam #1,
or from the Ford Plant, from the open space of future,

from the low friendly cliffs and the push of water over the rise.


1/13/07

improvisation (editing SRL's dissertation)

collage rocks and passport
with a change of clothes you're more an anthropologist
but the editorial content
we have eyes for native speakers
or at least the fishermen can tell
with a racket or a handsaw
no way to move or make sounds objectively
the spirit disentangles like a shuffling air of sounds
like Respighi turned around and facing the Tarpeian Rock
edit with a physical hammer
into that dream was forced the diamond
if you wait for it someone is going to try climbing up

1/19/07

no fudging

I won't take credit for any of this
no fudging
behind this line of cars
and the train's not budging

1/5/06

digest

the sweetest chicken soup
is made with rotten vegetables.

waterproof gloves fallen
on the linoleum kitchen floor.

and look! the northern lights
over the last passing clouds!

more important are the thresholds
when the light fades out,
and you have so many pens
you don’t have any room to take notes.

looking at the face of the man I ate
for dinner the other night, now
floating in the toilet bowl, I wonder:
did that chump ever dream of cannibals?

life’s just not as precious as people claim—
someone’s dying pretty much all the time.
eyes close, the grave widens, too many mistakes.

problem is we keep evolving, except
for the simple truth: that we so easily break.

1/14/06

not a drop of ink spilled nor tree dismantled

online publication makes me all warm like a meatball sitting in a 350 degree oven for too long on a cold cold night.

listenlight 06

got a hangup about the Voice of the Father

     when Boy Mechanics Attack.
   what did James Joyce ever do
               to you? what did Lyn Hejinian?
           I steep my morning tea in
        imprecations to Gertrude Stein
           with the rising sun, settle every slogan
               without confrontation before
   dawn. and now the broken
               syntax gets shoveled heartlessly
        into Lock & Dam #1 downwind
                        of the Minnesota Department
               of Public Works.

                                  what did
        river commerce ever do for
                        poetry? what did feminists?
        go out and give one a back-rub.
                        or at least shake her hand.

              or maybe you should wave,
   nod head acknowledge
               that avant-garde dislocation
             is a big enough Wonderland
               for everyone to get disenfranchised
        inside of. tell me another. shake
                        the hand of the man whose
               thumb you’re under.

        10/16/06

on the demon-haunted architecture of towers

wouldn’t you like an architectural span in optics,
in the light of the natural world, say, in refraction,
in the broken shards of the visible spectrum vouch
safed by the god Seth in his daemonic palaces,
built a thousand feet high and raining down
visions of eternal life for the common folk
bound to earth by chains of angelic jokiness?
isn’t it a gas what they do up there, above you?

12/30/06

evaluation time

Bob does and Bob tries and he will continue. Bob is with Admin, dynamic, the excellent other and Bob is skillful. Bob shares with Bob. The product team shares superlative builders and is knowledge. Bob is Admin with skillful. Bob and others share. Bob does and Bob is superlative in product tries. The builders are excellent, dynamic, with knowledge and continue the team with Bob, with his share of builders. Bob shares with his other skillful builders. Bob shares and does excellent product tries, Bob is knowledge, superlative. Admin continues with the dynamic team, continues with builders—excellent, superlative. And Bob does this and with this Bob is skillful. With Bob is the dynamic team, the product Admin shares knowledge with Bob. The tries share with the other. Bob shares with Bob. In excellent knowledge Bob shares superlative skill. Bob tries and he will continue. Others try and product with builders Bob continues to team with the share. Knowledge shares the dynamic and is skillful. Bob will continue.

1/4/07

“does it have impact on anything else we have to worry about?”

too bad, no control, 
no modernity,
you don’t get answers,
you don’t see your theories
proven to be true.

Dionysus in the cave 
stays drunk and disoriented. 

Apollo hung himself
last year. 

there is no science. 

11/7/06

so Larry wherever they found him

Sylph Standish, blubber of ridgery, 
capped on a silk and spayed torn
off syphilitic, burned on a warn
ing and loved by staring crepe sup
ply, so long where the nuclear steve
dores crashing so Larry wherever 
they found him.

1/2/2007