Douglas Messerli

plato

In the primary absence

thus is thus the word

elaborated as a tragic

presumption: there is no

silence. Ask him! That infantile

void is the figuration

of what agitates eros in heroes,

the reason history agrees

to exist within the voice.

We, who create black screens

of possibility, linger on

the streets of what is evident

-ly over, the palm against

palm leaning to the quake

of such gigantic bodies

that when they exist

they pass as dialogue back

to froth as madness,

dogging the assassin’s fictions.

See the moon flying across

what it stood for? This is an apprehension

of what was the moment

of a day we exaggerated

in space through whatever

relationship was filled

with what will be willed

as its potential.

Since the subject arose

already it has left

the process of agreement,

reason accepts

the word for the shadows

on the poet’s floor

Los Angeles, July 28, 1998 / June 4, 2006

storm

Although clouds nudge one another

in the real horizon, the theoretical

plains at their feet slip off

into territory…the dark mother

of night stacks the indefinite

into something almost perceived: is it

common thought or a sudden

miracle of the particular’s

desire to erect out of nothing

a possible formation of mass—as

that gel, that pool of hot acts that begat

the first living…amoeba

perhaps…which rose as an aphorism

in the sea of disgust? Brack, not black

was the nurse to the chorus of first

spasms, to fires, feathers, fins…

the imitation of a dream no one was there

to. I saw it!

I saw it detach from the dark,

naked silence, leaning

like an old man’s fist

about to strike

for blood: on the other hand

the pearl of treachery

without a shadow of the bones

beneath…the threshold of flesh

stretching taut as a tomb

over the thump of what is still

the leftover of what was.

Bow clouds! enter my mouth

before anger comes to earth

in the memory of that slow cook

that burned into heads the difference

of that without: hate

alas is not taught, but taut

as the tension between toe and heel,

the little finger to the thumb.

Indifference is not what history

is about. We are not that miserable

mass attempting to become some

thing—we know what separates

the imagined and what

[“Storm” cont. / no break

is because it is

ourselves. Perhaps.

Perhaps I am the motion in the dark

to become emotion—a lover

of the possible impossibility

of no thing. Perhaps

I shall simply sit

and watch the sinister forces in that field

or ignore what they might mean: a war

between “me” and “it.”

Come here, my dear, and hit me hard.

Los Angeles, February 3, 1998

here

The reverse of emergence

is the way

for whatever they call desperation:

Remains. Explanations. And the side-

effects of sitting for long periods on the edge

of your chair

like a dog with no bone

in sight set upon the act

of going away to come back.

One afternoon I stood

at the very center of the room

forever. I prepared to dream

about “real life,” but couldn’t

imagine how a throb could entice

such perspective.

And though there are some here

who go at regular intervals

I do not believe they truly

disappear. Like a child I think them

right outside the door.

And like the dog I go to it

to look at the other side

of my containment, my

o so patient, patient appeal

the anything that may lay

down like a child at kneel.

Observation hangs around my neck

like a bird that pecks at the little

heart I’ve left. If only you could

send me to fetch…whatever it was

we once thought was fetching.

The reverse of the wait is the emergence

of fear, the endlessness of being here.

Los Angeles, August 1, 1998

man overboard

Lifeline to

arrow dollops

into the myth

of what thin air

twists through,

the valleys overlooked

by the otherwise

dark TVs. Sealed

as age is from

stupefaction, a man rounds

his walk into the wind,

collar over eyes

as if the impulse

of his pores

studied the flat

descent into what

he climbs for, the dream

of hope that is

Latin in inattention. This laugh

will escape the corners

of his cynicism (the blood

is from the bite

of his own lips). Strictly speaking

speech is lost to anyone’s

heart to reenact

its own creation, the construct

is the spurned picture

of reality: it is a challenge

of that abyss of my response.

Response is the voice

of what love looks

to later as its past.

But claws scratch

that branch of the family

we remember by its arms.

And dream, caught between

the doorway and the fame

the glass has been

slid into is invisible

so that there is no choice

[“Man Overboard cont. / no break

but to crash into one’s

own embrace

Los Angeles, February 7, 1998