February 11, 2006

names reduced
did you this
did you that

you think so
you say so
you do so

shine. warm so you say.
warm. shine so you say.
say. warm so you think.

-- Jeff Wietor

The Euphrates at Babylon

old
gods nor symbols
margin
the next age was to plunge her
mysteriously
decapitated bodies

here
relics of life
beneath
thighs in the abandon of thought
two heads found near them
compact coherence

planes
a builder-prince
rough grain
covered with palm trees and date trees
cross one another
Chaldean theocracy

born
her brilliant nights
it was
instruments of geometry
astronomy was
on the upper terraces

sky
observe the need
bodies
nothing discovers everything
very skeleton
mathematical map

hard
study the stars
tower
of those cuneiform inscriptions
bas-relief king fight
statues with muscle

-- Jeff Wietor

Chapter III

between two
old rivers

the sand
covered up
everything

is human soul is:
the face
Chaldean palaces
ruins of Tello
light of an undying hearth

-- Jeff Wietor

Hoochy-Koochy

they sang
a song
suggestively

near them
two heads
with energy

reposing on
their thighs
in the

abandon of
thought

-- Jeff Wietor

February 7, 2006

Every day I nourish illusion
I live in San Francisco
I take the bus
I board the bus
I ride the bus
I travel by bus
I see the hapless, the
hopeless, the haveless
the bored, the bald, the
fat, the faces covered with
dermatological
horrors --
the skinny, the tattoos, the
cursed, the students
plugged-in, the
aged
whose next stop is
Death
Oblivion
or
Apotheosis

-- Jeff Wietor

February 6, 2006

on TV's
a man who looks
just like

Charles Steiner
(from my past
you don't know him)

except he's blond and wears
wire rim glasses but
everything he says

is said in earnest
and with dreadful
certainty:

he claims to know
all about
the Uncommon Cures

for Everyday Ailments
(everyday ailments?)
(uncommon cures?)

yup
that's
Charles Steiner

only younger
much younger
but just as earnest

I miss him
he had large hands
large feelings

his hands magically
could reach through
your jeans

and all of a sudden
you were swimming with him
in a frothy rawdy surf

coming with him
was like
riding a skateboard

through traffic
at midday
in the Financial District

on a Wednesday
in summer
holding a secret

in one hand
while scraping
with the other

accretions
of memory
from the self

-- Jeff Wietor

February 5, 2006

you probably believe that seeing the
word,

or the fatalistic number:

7 Miles Out
2006

has meaning
or is meaning
or carries meaning

Focus:
how many will that be?

you don't know
the kids
with microphones

standing on
the
freeway

talking
about
The End

I never thought this
would happen while
I'm on vacation

that's what
it will be
that's what it will be

yes

that is
what it

is

-- Jeff Wietor

February 4, 2006

my god!
can you say that --
OMG

it's massive
it's hitting
it's big

it's a big
why
it's why

I can't sleep
I can't wake
I'm telling you

I am tremendous
but I can't tell you
I can't tell you

it's horrible
it's over night
it's over tonight

I can't tell you
I can't see why
I want to go live

OMG
the sunlight
is eting me alilve

expect the end
to be
as soon as possible

what grows
outward
from you

will destroy
those
closest.

forecasters!
however
intelligent you are

are you ready to use all situations?
where are you right now?
give us a sense of where you are.

we're expecting to tell you
now
what will be later

that's the
joke
: start planning

-- Jeff Wietor

February 3, 2006

I'm guessing
there's a
lot of people

but then I wonder what
"Lot Of People
means

to a nurse's touch.
a touch of the nurse
"have you ever felt anything like it?

can you expect
anything like it?
so many people right now

are at home --

-- Jeff Wietor

February 2, 2006

We see it
on TV
But

we don't
Believe it

we live in this area
or
that area

it's
always
missed us

what that
is
that missed us

is
what

we're thinking
about
tonight

we're thinking this is our
greatest
event ever

We're
born.

that
this
is --

is
the
natural
question

-- Jeff Wietor

Conversations in February

here we are in February
at
last

here we are
at the keys of the piano

here we are
ain't we
remember ain't we

remember you must
to walk them through
memory

as if Memory
is a Garden of Walking Through:

if, when you remember to remember
you

you acknowledge
you know
you undersay

no, you understate,
no you understand--

-- Jeff Wietor

Last Conversation in January 2006

Quote:
I can see beyond the Universe
but I'm not so sure I understand what it is you
want me to say about it

well sure enough --
sure enough

there is no salvation without compassion for
every other
Being

-- that a question is is enough of a question to question; that a question asks is reason enough to remain silent; that a question is the Object of the Sentence
is reason enough to remember: Memories are made of this--

I live in Gaudy Splendor
a suburb of Your Name and Mine

yet I am not organized
nor am I Organization

nor am I
remembered by those
I remember

this, made of sand, gets us into the Neighbor
territory and there
I'm lost playing a horn on a
mountain top
walking along with a thousand thousand others
unable to count unable to remember
unable to waken to walking
but I walk still

a thousand thousand do you know how
much that is
much that is needed

can you imagine playing with a thousand children
a thousand thousand children of children

?

Unquote

Do I dare
Eat a peach?
sing a song about
eating a
peach?
or tell you
there are
no peaches
in the house.

if I tell you
it's all made of sand
are you somebody who knows what
sand Is or even
thinks in metaphor.

hopeless ain't it.

I took a picture
no you took a photo
I died
no you are still alive

today I found a waiting
waiting and understand this:
you will get lost
I happy to have found you again
It is the great secret.

Breath hands and Hands

I am not a
good
example of
Impartiality

of Being
Impartial

of
Remembering

of remembering
knowing

of you

-- Jeff Wietor

Adam Dreams of Shane

Something within us perceives Venus as
A morning star: a planet rising in
The east over the hills through the hills
Over the clouds through the sky;
In waking and in dream
To have no hope in the future gives
Consistency to the present
Alan Ladd knew that.

We mount the horse and become afraid
Of height afraid of the huge animal
Supporting our fragile weight afraid of the surge of
Potential power afraid of having no
Control over this thing this alive
Beast this natural mode of transportation.
Jean Arthur knew that.

The objects in this world: devoid of consciousness
Ignorant of the eventual backward
Movement of flesh to water of bones to
Earth of mind to air; & the intonation of
The voice (we will miss especially) retreats as
This profound sorrow of decision-making ceases.
Van Heflin knew that.

What he remembers through seeing
What he realizes not knowing
What within us perceives
Becomes what the boy wants
The boy craves.

-- Jeff Wietor

Feeling Convivial Miu Miu Mulls Upon Mason's Stride

Miu Miu Altoids Apple Sours
Seven fingers a whisker a moustache
O you O you My Darling Brad
Where Have You Gone

Today Is: a rosary of roses
Garuda flies North
Thelma, upon her adoption was renamed
Ananda is named Ananda

Ignore narrative if you want the poem
to live longer than you
Phlebas the Phoenician,a fortnight dead,
knew that and how

Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as
you.

When Connie got back from India
the first thing she said was:
"I've had it up to here with Supermind"
then gestured her hand flying
over her head

I sensed in her some creative tension but
shrinking creative tension; I also pictured her
living in a capillary somewhere in a human body.
Not hers.

Let me into your life
I am a wine jar and a drum.
Out of the goat's nose
flows the Ganga.

Slyly I remain
Slowly I go
Time is not a mistake.
You are right on the border.

Today we had darjeeling, Russian
Caravan and in the afternoon:
spinach oolong: a green day
smaller than an insert.

why is it
every word
has a meaning?
don't forget to pay for
any apples you take from the drawer.

he breathes out she reads aloud
she teaches him to read he remembers
hearing the Katzenjammer Kids
read aloud remembers seeing

in the little shop one
summer sat a little parrot
and next to the little parrot
sat a little man: a midget: he screamed

you mean the word five
means ten and ten means turquoise
while there is no word for that word
you cannot think of just now?

ok, these dice are one-inch
cubes (with rounded corners)
I found them in the street
in a fit of confusion

remember to tell Mason
I'm trying to bewitch him
with language; remember to look
in the mirror and see him: narrowly.

remember, Miu Miu, Miu Miu says
to herself reminding herself for fear
of wanting to forget: notice how good
he looks, his famous Crest of Ilium.

-- Jeff Wietor

Miu Miu Wakes Then Sleeps Then Wakes

1

red bottle-brush bloom
but the midday sun's hidden
by this sudden storm



2

a sudden impulse
to phone my mother's mother
gone for 20 years



3

these asparagus stalks
still wet from last night's rain
the first taste of spring



4

the sound-bytes of war
reflected in the TV
you face nothing more



5

effigies of doves
an unsteady staccato
from helicopters



6

long-stem strawberries
in a white ceramic bowl
given by sunlight



7

middle of the night
dripping sounds from the kitchen
water the cactus



8

middle of the night
fog horns from the Pacific
comforting sameness

-- Jeff Wietor

Whit Reads an O'Hara Poem to Mason

A City Winter

1

I understand the boredom of the clerks
fatigue shifting like dunes within their eyes
a frightful nausea gumming up the works
that once was thought aggression in disguise.
Do you remember? then how lightly dead
seemed the moon when over factories
it languid slid like a barrage of lead
above the heart, the fierce inventories
of desire. Now women wander our dreams
carrying money and to our sleep's shame
our hands twitch not for swift blood-sunk triremes
nor languorous white horses nor ill fame,
but clutch the groin that clouds a pallid sky
where tow'rs are sinking in their common eye.

2

My ship is flung upon the gutter's wrist
and cries for help of storm to violate
that flesh your curiosity too late
has flushed. The stem your garter tongue would twist
has sunk upon the waveless bosom's mist,
thigh of the city, apparition, hate,
and the tower whose doves have, delicate,
fled into my blood where they are not kissed.

You have left me to the sewer's meanwhile,
and I have answered the sea's open wish
to love me as a bonfire's watchful hand
guards red the shore and guards the hairy strand,
our most elegant lascivious bile,
my ship sinking beneath the gutter's fish.

3

How can I then, my dearest winter lay,
disgorge the tasty worm that eats me up
falling onto the stem of a highway
whose ardent rainbow is the spoon's flat cup
and in the vilest of blue suited force
enamored of the heated needle's arm
finds the ministrant an own tongue's remorse
so near the blood and still so far from harm,
thus to be eaten up and gobbled down
volcanoes of speedometers, the strike
that heats the iris into flame and flow'rs
the panting chalice so a turning pike:
you are not how the gods refused to die,
and I am scarred forever neath the eye.

4

What are my eyes? if they must feed me, rank
with forgetting, in the jealous forest
of lustrous blows, so luminously blank
through smoke and in the light. All faint, at rest,
yet I am racing towards the fear that kills
them off, friends and lovers, hast'ning through tears
like alcohol high in the throat of hills
and hills of night, alluring! their black cheers
falling upon my ears like nails. And there
the bars grow thick with onanists and camps
and bivouacs of bears with clubs, are fair
with their blows, deal death beneath purple lamps
and to me! I run! closer always move,
crying my name in fields of dead I love.

5

I plunge deep within this frozen lake
whose mirrored fastnesses fill up my heart,
where tears drift from frivolity to art
all white and slobbering, and by mistake
are the sky. I'm no whale to cruise apart
in fields impassive of my stench, my sake,
my sign to crushing seas that fall like fake
pillars to crash! to sow as wake my heart

and don't be niggardly. The snow drifts low
and yet neglects to cover me, and I
dance just ahead to keep my heart in sight.
How like a queen, to seek with jealous eye
the face that flees you, hidden city, white
swan. There's no art to free me, blinded so.

-- Frank O'Hara

Miu Miu Reads a Little St. John Perse

"Drunken, the more drunken, you were saying, for
denying drunkenness. . . ."
One again a man arises in the wind. His word as brief
as the splintering of bone. His foot already angled on its
course. . . .

"Ah, yes, all things torn loose! Let it be told among
the living!
Above all in the lower districts -- this matter is of
importance.
And you, new men, what are you going to do with
the heavy braids unbraided over the brow of the
repudiated hour?
Those who dreamed dreams in their rooms went to
bed last night on the other side of the century, facing
the adverse moons.
Others have drunk the new wine in fountains painted
with red lead. And we were of those. Any may the sadness
that we were be dissolved in the new wine of men,
as in the festivals of the wind!
Ended the dream wherein the Dreamer marvels
throughout his watch.
Our salvation is in the haste and the canceling out.
Impatience is everywhere. And over the Dreamer's
shoulder the indictment of dream and inertia.

Let them bring us from the Marches men of great
power, reduced by inaction to the profession of Enchanter.
Unpredictable men. Men assailed by the god. Men
nourished on the new wine and as though transfixed by
lightning.

-- Saint-John Perse

Miu Miu Looks Around Her Apartment

on the cupboard shelf
last winter's pomegranate
an unasked question

-- Jeff Wietor

Miu Miu Talks Back to Her Photoshop

Tonight seems such a long time ago
even as time passes I wait in public
gritting my teeth hoping to discover
the potentiality of rotating images

To answer complaints rising slowly like
masterpieces of decision I continue to
reject the conceivable for the concept of
continuity wishing for transformation

Baghdad had already been the site of
many book-burnings, mostly of works
deemed heretical. In 923 fourteen sacks of
heretical works, outside the palace gate

To change from the thing into not a thing
seductive whispers slither lightly tickling the
skin, a surge of funk our sole source of shape-
shifting a surge of break beats a divergent guitar

Forever is our grief our wish to know our wish to
be atmospheric and to know is to know time and
knowing know time passes as time passes ambitiously
like a genre of music scalding us with licks and quivers

There remain no images to remind the unknown only
the known and reinvention of the known will succeed
I'll mention a few loose couplings of the known in
order to remind you of what defies knowing:

Baghdad had already been the site of lyrical surges
of heretical break beats like a genre of music shifting
like the mewing of a cat trapped between the whisper
and the rumor and grief tumbling down

To change seductively these whispers producing an impact
a feature a stereoscopic film electrified to soothe or excite
Monsters from the Grave Monsters from Grace Monsters
and their trademarks: pain, loneliness, and operatic death

Thought is not like that and our thought though willing is
unlike the thought of Heidegger or Wittgenstein; we only apply
the nature of perception, and the structure of subjectivity;
known all known through learning through time nothing remains

There remain no images to remind the unknown only
a feature a stereoscopic film electrified to soothe or excite:
It's the fate of Baghdad through time to face sackings
from time our bodies too mewing with rumors and grief.

-- Jeff Wietor

Miu Miu Says Why She's Thinking About Suicide

Not because it's cold and rainy today & I'm in a cozy
office in Oakland; not because I don't understand a Thing!! about
Any of the Tasks at hand; not because the sound of people's voices seem
distant and far away & certainly not because I'm hungry for Mango
flavored ice cream.

What warms my heart my soul and my craving which used to turn itself to
discos, dances, warm flesh & electronic music is this:

just to close my eyes and realize what it means to
rest in peace.

The next time you're asked: what do you envision yourself doing for
work & you say: to be creatively involved with ideas and materials; to
do "good" & communicate with people & you hear in response: no really,
what kind of job do you really want.

consider not being alive as a better answer.
bitter
unconnected
& drowning in despair
because the inability to be specific
is killing you

-- Jeff Wietor