Catherine Daly

Where am I?

Notes & Quotes

Elegies open.

“one blue bird / …swoop(s)”

Mourning was taught to us.  By whom. 

By experience.  By language.  We learned.

                                                loss

where is

the dark

room

what is

where is

When will we return?

*

Clouds ought

escape my notice.

Where does this rule come from?

I shouldn’t screech.

            falling notes

I track clouds

tracking clouds means following an entire song, distracted

from purpose; clouds distract

whois

He, she, it is, am, be are clouds around us.

Over sea, over rock, over the Keys, behind condos,

apparent meeting, meeting as appearance, aperture, a blur.

Blank, flowing window, “diaphany”

music rather than actual wispiness inside, indoors.

gesture

order things, things only (after music)

Concentrating, I can see auras, but anyone might –

might be like the ability to hear certain types of music –

blank, glowing window and clouds.

“place for poets, not nature”

*

Dogs or rats or possum and birds of prey murder

when you don’t know the light switch

or your glasses where

from your dream, your disturbed sleep.

Romantic view “madness”

pain to liberate, satisfy the several demands of…

sharp pain or dull pain is better

ignore, walk it out,

listen to birds of prey.

Prey, descend.

Describing,

we are not safeguarded,

are no less victims.

Stress is white noise, pink noise, orange static,

weight, viscosity.

Where is that fucking rat? Jumped from the lanai, the LAN-fucking-I, through the window above the sink where I was washing a dish, scampered over the cold cooktop, jumped down and took off:

grey, white underbelly, strong tail, not large, maybe five inch body.

(there are other rats)

*

We make no frame, plants don’t.

            obsessed with border plantings

                                    boundary         hedges, green screens, growing walls

Jalousies, miniblinds, verticals

only impede insistent foliage,

many lizards, mangroves, banyans:

nothing as careful as a note,

temporary as a note.

Who is worshipped through voice

voice only

worldly instrumentum

choice sunder

voice worships.

Learn through conversing, sing

I frame and end.

Christian = I

Two “I”s.  We are opposite.

                        complement

                                    “verdant garden”

*

Plants open.  Also open, these rooms.  Flow.

Every thing is born is partly closed, open, raw and

more sophisticated than

some ax, bucket, radio.

limp dahlias, camellias, stems

rotting in flower water

ringing the cheap deal table

they’ve littered with pollen.

Was stark fear and relief

“whitens a vine at the edge / …unsaid”

subsumed in grief formerly?


*

Let the stars be our blanket.

Oh, they are.

Let the stars be our mattress

and roll the sod up

(like raccoons do).

mat’ress

n. 1. see Matress

Light pollution

streetlight tops uncapped

only Orion, Big Dipper, visible tonight – too much ground light for many stars –

and carves

diamonds carve

glass

What are you whispering to me?

What do you whisper?

Why am I sparkling?

I am naked.

Oh, I am married.

“stars shining right above you”

*

subject, object, infernal, don’t last (effect remains).

(with me)

(where? one)

A subset of nature contrasts city.

A subset of civilization (nature and civilization overlap in this construct) deserts,

architecture, rum, beauty, Olympics, public art

classical order, classification…

What does “delusive” mean?

Not elusive, allusive mangosteen

pineapple guava, acai

salmon roe

without eyes unclosed.

“the pleasure we receive by the new scenes and objects which are continually passing before our eyes”

Simple things darkly, running, ahead

judge, our flaw, their simple appeal.  Harmless

invasive

mint draws vermin.  Used for teas.  Tisanes, properly.

Plants top a retaining wall we braced.

Supernatural, loveliness is not nature; it is observed.

The thorn, Ophelia, Old English, early vernacular

“tripping the light fantastic”

*

Loose strife

“loosestrife / purpling the hill”

attaches, lets loose (all this striving).

Sui generis dynamism,

some strange vortex of ferns,

dinos, all get-out getting out.

Demon scrawl, generic sprawl,

intimate outdoors

meaning by making

meaning by finding – not locating, finding

meaning by construing – not re/locating… but finding and arranging

One created holy, one wholly sensual.

Then cross

that edge,

go over.

“the pressing / blue / I’m pressing / through”

*

Oh, no one can help me sleep.

Your body, my blanket

faded from pink satin to flesh tone,

a ragged corner tucked into my hand particularly.

I had begun to develop another corner, anticipating the deterioration of the perfect one,

tucking and picking and tucking underneath my thumbnail,

resorting to the perfect corner only to sleep,

when I left the blanket in a Holiday Inn in Racine, Wisconsin.

Aphrodisiacs range from banal to bizarre like memory –

this bouillabaisse, this fertility rite – created gem

sets the tone (ensure, treat).

Your unselfish heart

turned, the emotions –

you don’t realize

focusing

on them

is

leaving wanting

luxury and attention

from marks, bounds

to real nature, body,

this here we can’t cross

are left with “perfumed erotica”

instead of real experience thrust

thrash rather than dirge

where am I paying

“we live off each other, the heat mostly”

*

“there’s nothing to understand about beauty”

Falcons, hawks, eagles, or carrion creatures reassemble nothing.

Killing cruelty circle, tighter, down, strike

after watch, watch, watch.

The shrieking is not about that.

Rat screaming – s/he suffered – I put it “out of its misery” with an oar.  Before I got out of bed, “bedclothes” tucked up, I ensured there was one rat, trapped.  I plugged in the lamp (broken switch), put on slippers and winter coat and landlady’s flashlight, sweeping to the oar with light, locating the undead rat, killing it, oar and plastic bag conveyance to the trash can.

Victor

V

I dreamed a loud “snap.” It woke me exactly when I needed to check the traps for rats, 6:15 a.m.

*

“A random number suggests stopping at a random place, when I just as easily could keep on”

            Amy England

Inevitable numbers solutions

correct numbers relationships each other

one an-

world describes, check mark tic

next, not x.

Null, dictates my beloved, is the number

should would marry; not if Jupiter himself asked for her hand.

The beloved’s speech deceives:  a quote of love in wind is to be carried by fast water.

Null dictate my number.

Deceit:  cupid, cupidity quote deceit love

in fast writing.

beloved cupidity quote deceit love

*

A deep draft port, 40 miles from the city center

annex annex annex

a city with no center

nature w/o center, just proceeding

fresh local flavor, the city’s motto

decorations are down

grid of streets

a girl imposed on an island

peninsula

“where am I” who, me?

the city’s real cadence

inescapable logos

Destination Brand

The plage is the place.

Streets are strands.

Inside Her

That’s why we’re in this:

xenophobic paranoia publishing activity, communal sensibility.

The Trail’s dull roar

Tamiami

41

slick rail tricks

vehicles

read

writing as it is sounded is too loud

“you can’t hear yourself think”

clearing quiet for “your own” writing

*

Identify with the environment,

become the other,

taken

over.

How to be repatriated?

Species’ small tender

lining out.

We aren’t books when writing, but

we aren’t cliffs or bays or bay trees.

dark bay reflective bay

fishy bay

dull harbor, mud bottomed

I live in a climate.

What’s unchanging?

unnatural

names on landscape

letters and words

(place)

Certain statements about physical entities were now impossible.

tired of the road

trip step

not in love with its end

conflict scenarios limit presentation of complex…

lampoon the musings

I have not seen her, her heart monitored,

her breath, her small face.

I do not know her name.

*

out to dry

out in the rain-

soaked

Products might seem plain, but recyclable, portable.

Statue of a fish on a pedestal,

fish statue,

fish on a pedestal:

the several demands of commodity used.

Are they elegiac?

Things don’t know they are dead.

What if we don’t remember, if nothing around us triggers

what? memory? of what? where

where is history?

only here

a truly grand experience

never matched

“think reno.  think monaco.”

*

Memory Against Pattern

“this world being visited, by those who mind little but their own affairs,

or travelers, who make too short a stay, to be able to report any thing exactly of

their own knowledge”

martial

order

“only following”

marital, imposed

to leaves, to shells

in order to only to (the unlikely)

too many moths

dilated, the crowning

speckled backs, browns and beiges slow, killable

grains in the fridge

my sweaters, holes

Manuscript, weapon, problem:

I kill them; they also die

© Catherine Daly


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