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RETURNING FROM AN OVERNIGHT IN THE MOUNTAINS I went with kk and XaX, two poems who I met recently. They were very considerate companions, staying out of sight the entire time and never making any sound. We talked on and on. Here are some transcripts of it all: 
Looking back on the trip though, as wonderful as it all was, I can’t help but wonder what was left unsaid. ================================= PREFACE I want - words that well up from within this page, words emboldening, bolder, that – too much! - start to quiver, palms shaking as they grip me, I want words that shiver their flesh from their clothes, that shed out of their skin, that look, upwards at me. I want the mouths of my Words that are opening wide. I want Words, that diffuse, out from my view, a collectively squeal, a collection of thinning in the distance: howls. I want words that return from behind my head, with so much to tell that they cannot say. I want words that are - Tight. Words - Upright, with triangular ears, with trapezoid eyes, that see their own Eyes quivering, emboldened, into shivering question marks. I want words that slither and lunge up from this page. Words that seppuku, onto the top of this page, that slurp-squish out their Meanings, on the top of this page; I want Words that command: write them. Words that seppuku their guts: Me. ================================= A SIP FROM THE RIVER STYX I’ve read many essays on what it’s like to learn one has cancer. Lots of firm-faced affirmations, lots of “I am so grateful for …”. Lots of self-help calendar quotes, and smiley-faced emoticons (colored with just the right tint of grim determination). All supposed to describe what it feels like when you are woken, in the dark, by the carcass breath of Godzilla. Grinning. At you. Through a mouth that’s as wide as a human’s grave, and just inches above your face. Maybe it really was all emoticons for them - I cannot say. But that's not how it was for me. To help you calibrate what I’ll say below: I’m a research scientist. Many people do science as just a profession, as a job. But at the risk of hyperbole, I’m in it for the sheer glee of wrestling with God. Of trying to pull free one of the gazillions of tiny, shiny keys that He has stuffed deep into his pockets. So important is this to me that many times I’ve made a conscious decision to give up salary, power and prestige, just so I could have as much freedom as possible to do research. To wrestle for a key. In addition, you should know that I’m only 54. And that I’m a bit of a health nut. And that despite that, I was recently shocked with a diagnosis of lung cancer, when I was sure the mass in question was benign. Well, the verb “shock” doesn’t really suffice. A bit more metaphorically, for the first week or so, I was a rat in a cage, frothing, with bloody claws, shredding them on the wire door. As a fer-instance: One day I watched an interview on Youtube with the surgeon who would soon remove most of my lung. Next to the interview were video epistles, by people who knew they were to die from their lung cancer within a month. Their last words to their loved ones. I clicked on one of those video goodbyes. Afterwards, when the shattered pieces of me had managed to find one another, I was curled on the floor. Bawling, like a child. And that was not the worst of it. In moments between … the worst of it. When I was going for a walk, or looking out a window… One of the saddest things for me was thinking about the people I love, living after me. Inevitably forgetting about me, rather quickly. It felt like I was sitting on my front door stoop of my house, watching my neighborhood friends gathering to leave for summer camp. They will have so many adventures this summer, have so many surprises. But I won’t have those surprises. I’ll be left behind, on my front door stoop. In their past, quickly disappearing as they drive off. Remember how much I said I loved science? When you wrestle with God for a week, obsessed, and then, finally, you break through, find a shiny key … It’s like you tapped a jewel, oh so gently. And then - exquisitely – the jewel cleaved, into two pieces that just plop, into your lap… Or when you lie on your back, looking at the stars, and finally manage to drop upwards, into the sky, manage to feel the three-dimensionality of the positions of all those stars, falling up from under you. All of these feelings, all my deepest, most profound joys: They. Are. Nothing. Not when set next to Cancer. Cancer is real. All those passions, those raptures? They’re only microscopic, trivial baubles imprisoned in me. Cancer … is the hugeness that is outside of me. My raptures are like tiny, flat stick figures. Drawn in thin, scribbly ink, on scraps of plain white paper. Pasted to the ground. And now I saw that next to those small, two-dimensional figures is a Three-dimensional, Vaulting, Churning Brimstone, a fully filled-in… what would you call it? A skyscraper? My neck screamed, as my head was pulled up from the ground. Pulled up for the very first time in my entire life. I had never even known there was a third dimension. Or colors. Or filled-in figures. A skyscraper: Godzilla. That skyscraper is so vast, it cannot fit inside my skull. Not really. A very small part of it, tightly compressed, managed to squeeze itself inside me, at the very beginning, at the moment of existential shock. Unbearable pressure in my skull. But it soon burst loose, unfurled from my brain, stretching for miles, out of my direct awareness. It is simply too massive to be contained in a mind. (Or at least in my mind.) How did all this end? Well, I had a reprieve. The diagnosis was wrong. I do not have cancer after all. I feel like some unmusical Orpheus, who woke, in nightmare, at the edge of the Styx. An unending scream, seeing that gentle, flowing water. And who was then whooshed back, inhaled by some greek god. All the way back, to the land of sunshine, of baubles and butterflies. Of dancing dandelions in the daylight. To our “reality”. But it is there. It is what is real. Everything else, all the wonders that I take to be so true and glorious? They are shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave. No, not even that anymore. They are dimming memories, of the shadows I once saw. After I’ve turned my head, to look at the light that was casting those shadows. As I’m blinking. Almost blinded, by the immensity. Too much for my eyes. ================================= IN THE MIDDLE OF AN ARROYO A paper plate impaled upright; The side of a prickly pear cactus (after Ezra Pound) ================================= NEW YEAR'S EVE Black garbage bag speared on a tree’s sticks; Unfolds two wings, and then jack-knifes slowly. ================================= WHAT WRITING FEELS LIKE The baby is yet still - Baby; the baby is yet newly born; the baby is New-now old Breath; It is Baby yet new-oldest needs. The baby is must most right now; but is Newness of deepest of void. The baby is newest Now needs - it is now new need newest of filling. The baby is skinness-to-skin, it is outside that’s yet filling in. The baby is in -side unfurling, it is mother is Baby is morning. The baby is contact with father, The baby shows both of them how. =============================== A FOLD IN THE SKY Deep indigo drapes, heavy felts that are hanging from high, distant ceilings at the back of the stage. Silently, slowly, their long sides wave back, and forth. Tall, twilit spruce with hanging blue branches, that whisper side to side, that are tucked, deep inside of murmuring breezes. My head - just my head: It's a cushion from a chair which is tucked in a fold of a tall spruce tree’s drapes, which gently in a breeze, me blind and mute, back, and forth. Or perhaps more accurately: Tall blue spruces - But flipped, upside-down, and hanging from their roots which are buried, in a ceiling, which is hidden far above, in a fold in the sky. Or perhaps: I’m the one upside down, with my feet buried somewhere in an aquamarine sky, with the spruce right-side up, and it's perfectly still. And it's watching, me, as I back, and forth. Metaphors, standing in a line with patient, liquid eyes. Whispering, together, like long lace curtains which are brushed by a breeze as it turns in its sleep, which afterwards; quiet. =============================== All of these people, all walking by the lake, all of these hands through the hair, the fluttering breeze. All of these 40-page, loose-leaf checklists: this trait, yes, and that one, as well, but that one, no. Each just 40 pages, loosely stapled, flapping in the hair of the fluttering breeze. But turn, out there, out there if you look: some flapped-free pages, now singleton sheets, now waving, slightly, within the slow, lapping wet. =============================== Words can be a filmy barrier; can be a blurring, in the in between here and over there; can require a remaking, a re-self-constructing as they emerge, as they are pulled across and into over there; can require a rebirthing by a thought, of a thought, one that is very, very similar but well, not quite, not exactly, and not fully completely so. A softest blurring, but well, not quite, instead a … distraction from what I’m still trying so very hard to say =============================== Every second leaves its taste in its successor. And each year is an aftertaste in all of its descendants; their ancestor. How can a right-now slip loose - become a moment with no futures, a time with no taste, Immaculate? Slip loose its pasts, my futures, this question; Become a sight without a thing that was seen? My futures become my pasts, but without a right-now. I am Vanished from my telescope's eye. =============================== Sometimes you look up at a cornice, or sky or a roof, when nothing is there because you think there is. And once I was walking on a city street and nobody looked up at a cornice, a roof, or the sky, even though something was there because they thought there wasn't. =============================== Most words are made-up, constructs of us. But some few are discovered, like some previously unknown mineral. A peculiar patina, just cleaved clean from a hillside. Casting new reflections into our eyes, into places that we'd never been. New twistings inside that now we can see. New words. =============================== LOOK AWAY This sentence does not see itself. The rising sun is blind to the glints of brass, flaring below. The wind does not feel the leaves, a broom beating dust from a rug Except: A rowboat, with raised oars on a still, shadowed pond. And so, your eyes, they twist, and then they slip free, and then they sprint back outside through the big black back door. =============================== SELF REFERENCE One of Yin / Yang is larger than the other. Which? =============================== A path in the snow on the right of the road, loops back in the cul de sac, and now is aimed at you. It is simple to check that a particular code opens that lock in your palm. It is difficult to find the code that opens that lock in your palm. A particular way of thinking, that seems to work. "How should I think about life?" The snow cups the path, in its palm. A way of thinking is "consistent" if it never contradicts itself. A way of thinking is "complete" if it can find the answer to every question. Our way of thinking has explained that our way of thinking cannot be both. Our way of thinking suspects, but is not sure, that in our way of thinking, it is always easier to check an answer than to find it. Orange sunlight slipping sideways, between the too few black trees. Tinting just the tips of the snow. "How should I live my life?" If you magnify a coastline, you will find it always looks the same. If you magnify the snow, you will find it always looks the same. If you magnify the cells in you, you will find the image keeps changing and changing and changing. The snow melts slowly, in the spring, opening its palm. =============================== A PROGRESSION I need to know what is the me that I am to certain others. I don’t mean certain other people. In addition - this is important, and very hard - it does not matter whether those certain others are correct. This goal will never be attained. This too does not matter. *** All of that had been etched on a thin white plate. But turn it over; the other side is hollow, and wide, and you cannot see its bottom. One could fall into it. =============================== A PIECE OF MUSIC A baton, right after the conductor taps the music stand, and raises his hand. A chopstick, just before the patriarch spears the plate full of dumplings, to start up the family's first course. A napkin, just before the mother taps its tip at her baby’s oh-shaped mouth. A booty, plum-sized and baby blue, as it falls from the happily swinging feet to land on the flat wooden floor. A perfectly flat mirror, as you peer in it at an angle at the people who are hiding behind you. A mirror-flat lake, after the glare from its surface forces your hands up to help shield your eyes. In the woods behind the lake which was glaring like glass, you could now see the weathered wood cabin. Mother of your baton. =============================== A long string of cloves, only the top one held up, above all the water. Each of the others a scene / some voices / some thoughts / some who were watching. And the further back I remembered, the further out from the water I hauled my sodden heavy string full of cloves. =============================== To get under your topsoil don't try digging with words; Words will just puff from your hands, if you try to pull them to ground. To get under your topsoil, you must dig with a hole; a hole that's about two feet wide and six feet long - just like the holes floating behind you wherever you've been. Press your hole, down, deep into the earth. Then get up, and brush off the dirt from your pants puffing, off into the sky. =============================== LEAVE NO TRACE POETRY How do you sculpt a pot without touching clay? How do you compose a painting without holding a brush? How do you release your reflection from the cup of your hands, without it looking like you? How do you beam lights into the darkness behind that don't reflect back at you? =============================== PARTIALLY ORDERED SETS On day n, the tables were arranged as the perimeter of a square, with a large hole in their middle like a face with its nose cut out of it, and with a few empty coffee mugs, askew on the table surfaces, and the chairs were all angled, sticking out. On day n - 1, the tables were arranged as a square, with people pushing the perimeter, pressing table tops, and in the hole in their middle their words began to lock, and whirlpools pulled, tightening the faces, and coffee mugs cooled. On day n + *, the tables were arranged in rows, facing the viewing screen in front with the chairs neatly tucked in, "smartly" as my mother used to say, but none of it could be seen in the dark, the dark, the dark. In the angled time, n- + n+, the chairs were in fetters, stacked as slaves had been, in the dark holds of ships, with my legs threading the arms of the ones beneath me. Sometime in years A, B and C, they called an ambulance for me, dying in the middle, between the tables. And in the middle of those years the paramedics watched, exhausted, as a baby finally coughed, and wailed and wailed. =============================== It is common for poets (and I am not one), to grace their nouns with souls and surround them with baskets full of verbs. Gifts for nouns to speak, to convince us we feel. So a stone might stare or cock a quizzical eye, while a tree might nod, and raise its face to the sky, where a cloud might watch, or whisper in Stone's ear. Oh if these nouns might speak so that I too could hear! If language could explain, if mere nouns could tell me how. If we could sit around a table, Language in one chair, Conversation in another, and I might serve fine wine, might their nouns reveal their souls, and thereby show me mine? =============================== I didn't "exterminate" my self. Nothing so intense, so taut with ambition. I just abandoned it, maybe a thousand miles back. Heaved it off the top of the wagon. To be fully honest, it hadn't been doing anyone any good. Way too heavy to bounce on the baked earth, it just thudded, once. One corner of it impaled into the greenish-brown crust, may it rest in peace. I expect life has worn my self down since then. Become a target, for the sky's wet riflery. Or maybe a shelter for some snarky, honking crows, or for a nibbling family of nest-building rodents. =============================== FRACTURED TIMELINES Terminal G in Munich airport is a long, long concourse with a long, thin thread of snack bars and bathrooms, coffee machines and a smoking lounge whose windows are very wide, slipped all the way through its long, thin middle. Terminal A in Denver airport is a long, long concourse with a cancer at its center, a tumor of shops and snack bars, coffee machines and pinballs of people. I remember teaching you to drive a truck, the glee almost splitting your face, its sudden twist, up, into my chin; Really? Can I? There are chairs outside the smoker's lounge. You can look in the fishbowl, at humans making fish-faces, deep drags. Sucking long ashen sticks through the hole under eyes. After the mass shooting, Level 4 in Denver union station will be just for the airport express. The crust of shops, spangled barnacles will all be sucked below, beneath the trains. On the ramp to the road to the train, to the planes to the hospital overseas, I turned in my seat, to answer your question. And so didn’t see the truck, losing control. =============================== On the trail he is inside his eyes, and inside his pole-swing there are rhymes Rhymes of thoughts, rhymes that whisper about a hiker, who turns, and stares, back at him, at somewhere behind where I just was. Where faint rhymes now surface, slowly in the rhythm of pole-swing. =============================== SAMSARA OF A POEM Every poem has a soul. Born first as ... a cabbage. It earns good karma, so its next version is a cat. But a sinful feline, alas, full of claws, hacking hairballs. So next time it comes, its form is a tomato, quickly chewed, and sickly, and even a bit sour. So next up, going back, the poem is ... a cabbage. But now it's a Brassica, with more insight, self-awareness. And so the next time the poem is a monkey, full of promise. And so with yet more good deeds, the poem sets up a cue shot, to find itself a human creator =============================== Sleep is a slow swaying in the bowels of a pond. Dark and limp things gently loosen, down there, float up. Surface waters are always different in the morning. =============================== It's autumn, time for aspens in love. That one, she won't admit it, but mention His name, "oh by the way", and her eyes peel open like the sun grinning in the sky. =============================== TRYING TO CATCH UP WITH MY FUTURE There is a person - I think it is always the same person. I keep thinking I see her. At a busy cross-street ahead of me, disappearing around the corner. Or across a crowded concert hall, walking out the exit. Or leaving the secure area of a building, as I'm entering its foyer, through a bored metal detector. So often, when I'm focused on something completely different (always it's that way), I'll brush the side of an image, just as it's vanishing. I think it's her, entering a museum on the other side of the street. To be honest, I'm not sure it's always the same person. It may be someone different each time. People who just look similar, when seen from far too far away. Zeno's paradox. I keeping getting to where she was just a moment ago. It may all be in my head, I don't know. Let me make a prediction. *** Sometime in the future, someone will make an artpiece that looks like this: The piece has a definite order, starting at the left, progressing to the right. At the beginning of the piece, it's one of those 19th century stop-action photo-sequences, of a nude, ambling to the right. Many frames, easily flowing together. Small changes between successive frames, accumulating with time. All the images are in severe black and white, as 19th century photographs were. Very saturated film; almost no grey in the image. Nearing the middle of the piece, the comfortable gait of the sequence abruptly ends. The figure turns to the camera - toward the viewer of the art piece. As though she suddenly notices that she's being photographed. All the frames up to this point were the same size. But the next frame is far larger. In that next frame, the figure is running, hard, clearly very upset. Right at the viewer (me). The next, final frame is huge. It stretches almost from the floor to well above my head. By itself, it's nearly as big in area as all the frames up to this point taken together. And this last frame is filled, to where it seems like it's going to burst. With the figure's taut face. Nothing but that face, its border pressing against the picture frame. Screaming, at me (?). I can't even see the figure's neck, or the top of her writhing hair. Her eyebrows are twisted cords. A giant, surreal tongue fills the central third of the image. Framed by glaring, angry teeth. In this future, I will read the title of the piece, placed beside it on the wall: "THE PAST, TRYING TO CATCH UP WITH THE PRESENT" *** I stand back, appraising the piece as a whole. Finished, I walk through the door on the right, into the next gallery. Nobody is left in the room behind me. Just a two-dimensional, frozen face. =============================== My shadow blocks my path. I must twist it, sideways, so I can squeeze past, complete my hike move that dark pool behind me. =============================== LEARNING TO SEE The sun rolls over on its broader shoulder, turning its backside to us. And then the sun pulls a sheet down over its head, scooping our eyes out. And then when our eyes are both dried, the sun twists the blinds: letting us gaze into stars. =============================== A spinning top flamenco dancer, A whole ballet whirling dervishes A rotating barbershop poll spins, spun now Quite slowly and deliberately. They / she / it / you have turned less even than a half, part-way, pulled insides out and through the mouth. Have smoothly pivoted a steady gaze, like the long, sure rise of a long, slow pendulum. Try doing that when you're awake. Rather than where you are now, dizzy and half draped over the side of a dream. =============================== When the woods reflect you, well, then something's now found. =============================== =============================== Copyright David Hilton Wolpert, 2013, 2023, 2026 A PIECE OF MUSIC |
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