Boundaries

I.  Statement of Purpose

she remembers 
sunday afternoon
the one time
with her grandfather
how he tried to coax
a squirrel
into climbing up a tree
by gesturing with his cigarette
and the droopy-tailed critter
refused

the old man was infuriated
sent her back 
inside the house
while he
fetched a shotgun 
from his room
and

permit me to try another:

once upon a time
there was a king
in a stone castle
and somewhere in his castle
a shapeshifter plots
to kill him

the sage warns the king
and the king gathers his knights
raises the drawbridge
to trap the shapeshifter
and sets out to hunt the villain down

the king begins to get paranoid
suspects everybody
slays his queen
and his most trusted adviser

it ends when the shapeshifter takes the king's form
and, at the top of a tower 
confronts him

during the pitched battle
between the king and his doppelganger
the knights burst in
but they are unable to distinguish
which one is the real king
so they stand by
hoping that the real king will emerge victorious in battle

one of the kings slays the other
and

try again:

there's this guy, let's call him A
and he leads a pretty mundane existence
one day
he decides to act mysterious 
so that he'll attract attention
people will see him doing mysterious things
and wonder
'why does he do these things?'
there's this other guy, then, B
who sees A and becomes obsessed
with finding out why A does the things he does
so he follows A around
questioning everyone A comes in contact with
of course, none of these people know what A is up to
but, B, he thinks these people are lying to him
covering up for A
and so he beats some of these people up
tortures some of them
kills some of them

eventually he confronts A
on the top of a building 
and

can we tell them what's going on now?

	you mean about us?
	about me
	and you?

yeah.

	i don't think we can do that.

why not? they're involved. they have a right to know.

	there are too many 
	equilibria in place
	telling them could 
	fuck it all up
	i mean suppose . . .

suppose there are
four friends having a meal together at a restaurant
we'll call them W, X, Y, and Z
who, in a neutral state
will naturally arrange themselves
in a particular way
they will sit in particular positions
relative to one another
and there is an equilibrium

now suppose
that deep, deep down
W has never forgiven X
for some wrong X once did to her
how does the seating arrangement change?
let's go further 
and suppose that Y knows about W's resentment for X
suppose that Y's bond with W is stronger 
than his bond with X
add in the fact that Y is going out with Z
and that Z also knows the whole story
but thinks X is in the right
how does this alter the dynamics
the body language?

the neutral state is shot to hell
so you see, don't you, how it'd be better . . .	
	
	how it'd be better if everybody were just left in the dark?

well, they'll figure it out eventually, won't they?

	they might, they might not

how 'bout 
we let them think it over for a while
and explain it all later

	no, i don't think so

so we never tell them?

	's for their own good, really



II.  Not the First Time and Not the Last

blinking
as steps slide off the land
the edge of water is 
something you fear
only behind enclosure
proximity of vision

what is left and what remains
in the wake
of these encounters
what remains and what is left
what functions in the face of sea spray
and damp sand

familiar smell of ourselves
reassurance 
cold correctness
colored under floodlights

between twisting tunnels
you make your own way
sitting upright against
the compression of velocity

you can go this far
and unaided
no farther

the key is in editorial control
to erase those parts
you do not like
if such is your preference

the danger
is in arrangement

coincidence
and your conspiracy

you conspire 
though you deny it
for such 
is the nature 
of conspiracy

under rotation 
edenic 
then 
by degrees 
infernal
present yourself
to yourself

by yourself
at the edge of water
know that towels 
will staunch the bleeding
and know also 
that a  thing to be feared
is different
from a thing that is feared



III.  Portents

proposal: glass is clear
only sometimes,
when thick enough
it is brown
or green

and 
after the rain
we know

something impending
in the spread 
of a gull's wings

***

What does it amount to, 
to know a path through the woods
	when there are more, waiting to be found?

for want of better words,
the expression of
a special kind 
of sympathy
	as the first of three signs
	falls into place

of a choosing,
five are found
that want uniqueness

do the math

i know some
who have seen death 
in the grove 
beyond the bridge
that crosses the creek
that rises when it rains

but we are not
stamped 
of that same coinage
nor, electrified,
do we find ourselves 
with backs against
something 
unyielding

play by the rules

paths of our own choosing
or not

as silence steals upon us
unnatural 
in these old places
places of slaughter

which dance do you dance? 
dance of fools

dance of fire
war dance

dance of peace
of love

dance of the rimwalker
the seeker

***

a beachcomber
combing these shores
for fragments
gathers them together

all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put that stupid egg 
together 
again
		this iteration
		words acquired
		but not the form

this is wisdom accrued

a smile and a wink
before relenting
to the blade

surrender is sweeter
when unsought

and sometimes

sometimes

aqueduct
rhymes with orange


IV.  The Derelict House

the spark is the poem is the key
the flame that does not spark

and sparking
does not flare
and flaring
passes over

for if we pass over
we do so
without permission
without fear
of trespass
of death

we defile the signs
that spell out the rules
that draw the lines
in dirt
on gravel
or on black pavement
with chalk

sesame
gives us access
to the places where
a man wandering
may be taken
lost 			

through inattentiveness			
distraction 
where a child walks in surety

we will 
(when the time 
is right for such things)
emerge into the light
like a stranger's eyes
emerge into isolation

	lookin' at you, kid
and looking at you

***

i have seen our corpses
littered across the street

or pale and bloated 
in the water

have you seen them, friend?
did they bear your mark?
and the wounds
did they stare at you
and bleed
when you drew near?

these are the decoys we have set up
all shot down
though not necessarily shot
lynched, perhaps
or drowned

move yourself and save

a stranger attempted 
	such a stratagem,

	came into our city
	and left soon thereafter

	had she stayed
	she would have become
	part of the landscape

	another rode in on drum beat of rain over rooftops
	came into our circle seeking his own kind
	found nothing
	but his own remaindered self
	a pile of ashes 
	which lifted away 
	with the gentlest breeze

these are not the places that you search
for such things;

we avoid similar fates
by staying




V.  Detritus

there is a box full of things that we keep around for the sake of having things. we never look at these things, never take them out 
and use them or play with them. they just sit there. in the box.

there is no reason to throw away these things. 
they aren't annoying things. 
they're just there. and 
it's nice to have 
them around.

but they take up space. they do. space that 
could be used for other things. useful things. fun 
things. things we'd actually take out of the box once in a while. 

but it's nice to have these things

but we've got to get rid of them we need to clear up 
								space

		for 
		other 
		things
		like
this box
	in other realities
	might be labeled 'memory'
	or 'things taken for granted'

	but we are beyond such crudities 
	this box					
is just a box					
	with things in it				
	nothing more
	and nothing less

something is a poor substitute for everything and anything
ask me what will come of nothing and i will tell you
everything emerges from oblivion
there is death and there is creation
and when riding in a car
we have two choices
to look behind us
or ahead 

and enunciated, of course, it begs to be taken as an invocation, a summoning, but these are not things that could be orchestrated by 
the human will and, yet, bear more heavily on us than a term like 'coincidence' can imply, there is a cause and an effect and the fact 
that the agent of the cause is unaware of the nature of the effect does nothing to deny that that agent must be fully aware that an 
effect of some sort will manifest itself and can the agent not therefore be held responsible?

who holds us
responsible?

we will not say the words they beg to be said but there is a thrill to be derived from denying 'them' the satisfaction

whoever 'they' are

when we are tired

bored
lonely
or afraid
that is when
these things will creep back at us
but we will manage

remember 
how, wounded and hungry
we sought aid from strangers
but know now
most are worse off 
than ourselves

what you might call more
we shall call 
less:
a matter of perception
and not
it is these distinctions
that make 
things 

difficult

	she keeps the box in the attic along with the other things she does not take out and look at or use or play with and so in a 
way it all just takes up space and in a way the attic is another box and the attic is another thing in a world full of things she never 
plays with or uses or looks at and 

				        spring's on its way
time to look through
the useless junk sitting there 
collecting cobwebs and dust
and decide that you don't
want to throw it away
not just yet



VI.  Aqueduct

creature of the moment
what demise
do you foresee
for yourself?
you know only
the spark that arcs
across the spine

nervous reaction
clarity of the instant

there are things which avoid us
on our account

	it is something like dreams
	are believed
	to be

this is the clearing away 
of roadblocks

***

Light is translucence--peeled layers of onion, missing at center as though through and thrown gestation: 
		[Pets are negotiable, . . .
a point in time line isolated, peculiar to our particular insular situation; in a stream, pebble predicament turning 
influx, dilation, reduction: 
		. . . twenty cents = a paradigm, and . . .
to reduce, to lead back, consequent with asynchronicity of absolution only granted ONLY under ONLY extreme 
stream extruded ONLY duress lacking which to formulate, questions our other preoccupations:
void abyss, whole of which it is so overdone and done once more because i asked for it, 

but he never actually told him to play it again, 
but we get what we ask for no matter how bad it is to say 
stay a while and talk yes talk 
	
talk is just talk,
but i can be better Yes i know i can i Know it, 
but, really 	
		how can we tell?				
		. . . the truth is out there.]


VII.  Précis

morning dims the glow of stars
dawn pushing 
shadows pressing 
against light
early red death haze
and the bus tells you all you need to know

let me tell you a story

or better yet
you tell me one
			Once upon 
			a time			
watchers watching				
close our humble shade			
and new trails
cut through new earth

blood first
no no
first, the cut
then the blood
then the trickle

we ache to know 
the taste of water
the color of wind

this is the fearful dust we walk, white dust
remains of those gone before
bleached white by sun
ground fine
underfoot


VIII.  Trespass

as we begin
a sign may implore us:

PLEASE KEEP OFF THE GRASS

such prohibitions are not for us
and if the path diverges once
and once again
we will walk them all

the difference formed by frost 
december chill
dew condensed and frozen still
formulates a lack
something subtracted
from the whole

we will walk this path and that
we will walk between
we will walk
wherever 
we damn well please

***

after the rain, a night 
not quite allowed to clear
by the vagaries of wind

thus, morning dons the color
of conscience, menacing
and gray

from the earth, here
rises a tree 
with shadow wide enough 
to enclose
note how the shadow tapers away 
from the light

it does not come cleanly
this naming of names
yet something to be gained 
in knowing 

the roots 
	from the trunk

the trunk 
	 from the branches

and the branches
	             from the leaves

they curve upwards 
catching light

and in the shifting of patterns
something is gained and
something lost:

this is the price
of our preoccupations

black ink dropped in water 
blossoming last dance of dispersion
unmediated entropy
before the fade to gray

and somehow
it is never enough
to see these things
played out before us
as in some show
or spectacle
we must grasp them for ourselves
these losses
moments of indecision
the tremorous flicker 
before the waning

we will go through the motions

and after
what will transpire
we shall see

as one who scatters 
seeds on cement
expects to reap nothing

this is the terrain we tread
softly and softer still
and maybe
just maybe

something surprises us
and we are neither where we began
nor the same 
as [she remembers]


Post Scriptum

we leave you with a story

a story 
about a book . . .

Hidden, somewhere
in a library out of Borges,
is a very long book, 
billions of pages long.

Some time ago, six scholars tried to decipher its meaning:

	The first looked at the book and dismissed it as gibberish, a series of letters of the alphabet with no cohering 
principle.  He subjected the text to every means of decryption at his disposal and came up empty handed.
	The second was slightly more perceptive and noted that every third letter, when pieced together, would form a 
string of words, but, again, he could not determine any order to the words, so that they, too, seemed randomly selected 
like the first had thought of the letters.
	The third realized that every fifth word, when strung together, would form sentences, but the sentences didn't 
seem to logically follow from one another, and, so, seemed to be nothing more than the ramblings of a madman.
	The fourth to study the text found that taking every seventh sentence would reveal coherent paragraphs, but 
these paragraphs failed to make sense in conjunction with each other; although they were all narrative in form, the 
characters and setting would change from one paragraph to the next.
	The fifth persevered even more and was able to proclaim that every eleventh paragraph would cohere into a narrative, 
but it became apparent that what he had in fact discovered were chapters which did not properly link together, because, 
after following the story in every eleventh paragraph for about two hundred paragraphs or so, the story would again break 
off into another narrative with wholly unfamiliar characters.
	The sixth scholar determined that every thirteenth chapter would pick up where the last chapter had left off, 
forming a thoroughly coherent narrative all the way through to the end of the book, a masterpiece of literature, in fact, 
which, when published, was instantly lauded for its evocative prose, depth of allegory, and generally damn good writing.

Some time later, another man, 
examining the original text,
saw something else entirely and, screaming, 
fled into the night.

moral of the story: 
just because you don't see it 
doesn't mean it isn't there

and just because you do
doesn't mean it is

***

there is a point when 
noise becomes signal
and static, an utterance

this is no magic
only the recognition
of things already there