chalky white
or
deep tar black
afternoon quiet
but my head pounds
it could be
steam summer
or
prickly leaves
of autumn
but it never changes
though i hope i do
just as the uncarved block
hopes for an artist
to make it
beautiful
so the rain
and the wind
shape it instead
unless it can learn
to shape itself

Piercing through the outer skull,
Deeply into the brain, into the maiden thoughts of an unborn child,
You arrive at a magic place
Far past the feelings of this animal protected by it's mother.
Uncarved like dawn,
With its blueprints for a life it must live as other tell him to.
Past the deep rippled hills in his mind, into the forrest of feelings,
Filled with thoughts of happiness, with plenty of room for despair.
Purple trees and two green moons, creatures unknown to man.
The child kicks his mother, and the brain starts to tremble.
Trees fall down and start burning, it's starting to rain.
The child opens his eyes and starts to cry.
The mother looks at the baby and smiles.

Laugh all you want,
but when I was a kid
I didn't watch
Thriller after dark.

But I danced.
I danced my *** off in that lit living
room
with Joci.

All night long,
popping
and moonwalking.

Now that I'm old(er)
I know how to build spaceships
and I can put
the popcorn
in the microwave
myself.

I can take the popcorn out of the microwave
and watch Thriller all night long.

But
then
my little woodpecker
came.

When I was
Cynical
with power
now and then,
I became
Raw
and uncarved
again.

We dance over the graves all night long.
Our tombstones are smooth
and we make light
together
with our feet.

Little woodpecker
what are you beginning to etch
in me now?

the more i stick to a routine
that might leave a few people in a mental
asylum,
    who would not welcome
frustration, doing the same thing,
over and over again,
   i.e. going to a supermarket and buying
whiskey and coke, becoming "too" friendly
with one of the shop assistants,
    knowing her name,
that's she's diabetic:
i'm only in here for the whiskey luv...
it's not that i mind,
  it's about as close i'll ever become
bewildered at life, in general...
      **** Jupiter and a moon-landing,
this bothers me more,
   i don't get the puppy-eyed look
of people embarking on a philosophical
odyssey -
i don't know why i should be prescribed
the Aristotelian: beginning with awe
  type of management of the subject,
or what Nietzsche predicted,
   and is currently known:
the narrative in the west,
alias: talking for the entire human species...
   that ****** uber-schnurrbart
really did see something...
   now i'm experiencing it,
  it's called 2 billions worth of China and India...
i'm actually, sometimes found,
listening to pointless youtube videos...
  i get it: it can get a little bit *****,
my bachelor status isn't exactly orientated
around diapers, although,
as Borat might have said:
that would be nice...
         you know they filmed that movie
in Romania, and not Kazakhstan?
              it's almost a bid sad to be around
poverty, and tribalism,
     can't make a joke out it,
couldn't make a mid-western gothic out
of it either... what with t.v. in your own company....
and yes, oddly enough...
   i have a bed, and i turn on the radio,
i never fall asleep watching the t.v.,
must be a western thing... you dig?
    1950s slang, more comprehensible than
anything i could ever hear from the slang
quarter of language these days...
   the latin quarter? busy...
literally... greece and italy backrupt...
    so, hey man, what's it like not able
to *** around the country doing factotum jobs?
    what's with that over-arching
castration concept of living with your parents?
ah, you know man,
   ****'s on the stove, and i hit a ****** note
with my saxophone...
sound very much like a wet ****...
you know, the **** you **** that almost feels
like ingesting carbonated water through your ****,
what's the word: trembling, frizzy?
    you know: do the motorboat with your lips...
i woke up today and didn't feel like living,
but the noose wasn't exactly an option...
my grandparent's neighbour?
hanged himself on a door-****,
i was visiting them when it happened...
****'s sake! on a door-****?
                      that's really desperate...
    i mean: i wish i was that guy...
but at least in the case of capital punishment:
when it was still active...
   you got the scaffold... and you dropped...
and your neck broke, and it was death in an instant...
   he had a gimp for an executioner...
   so yeah, life's cool,
i drank that wine i made in less than a week,
35 litres of it...
         i woke up today, thought:
give me the downhill... right now!
i thought i'd delay *******...
          built a quasi lego piece of the Eiffel tower,
then decided... i need to brush my teeth...
had a shower...
              then i cooked dinner...
  well... dinner two days in advance...
one sauce was a spaghetti bolognaise...
another a sauce for cottage (i.e. using beef,
not lamb) pie...
made some funky cool poh-ta-toes...
               for yesterday's roast beef,
left uncarved the previous day by being
left to get the thrill man gets
   ******* and jumping out of an ice bath...
so the juices condense, and you can almost
make out the pink flesh on the second day...
and some ménage à trois.... oh sorry...
too much Dell Boy Trotter in me at the moment:
gosh... the memories of watching that twichy
character on screen... mangetout...
and in between i took off the washing from
the washing lines in the garden...
             faked smoking sitting in the february
cold for a while...
   that's 2 meals in advance that is...
      and this really belongs to a creed that states:
if you can read... it's better to read about
something that doesn't have cars blowing up,
or avalanches... or dams bursting in northen
california... well: it's not exactly
   tolstoy's war and peace... but it's something
that allows for sensationalism of the news
and the odd chance of seeing a good movie...
    or i guess: the antidote to a good poem,
is the worst imaginable poem, actually...
saying that: people call poems bad when
they are rigid in using technique...
poetic technique... i prefer a stance on
spare of the moment / spontaneity than something
that might require a hammer of metaphor
and a nail of a pun...
           some call it innovation,
others can't say much because they're myopic...
and lo! yonder the savannah and the buckling
gazelle! right on the chin...
hoofs, no shoelaces, back legs made front legs
into spaghetti... and there... a plum on the chin...
boom... down onto the green...
          another consideration would be
a man in clown make-up crying,
    and a fat-cat billionaire laughing...
    or was that ever, not the case?
  it has to be idiosyncratic, this english "thing"
of calling laughter crying and crying laughter...
     it actually is a very english "thing",
when you get too much psychology,
about how keeping the word ego can complicate
merely saying i...
  and there's no other latin word in sight,
and you then get egoism, and egocentrism...
    i mean: what's up with that basis for a theory,
    evidently it's a case of the word becoming
too uncomfortable, since no one actually says
  ego cogito ergo ego sum... it suddenly drops off
and people who say the above end up only saying
cogito ergo sum... and is that why people
you can actually ascribe so much theory to the ****** word
that might rob people from having a narrative?
    rob the people of a narrative and you return them
into a state of being pulverised by 5 vectors,
the pentagon of the senses,
    and evidently they're unable to narrate their
day-to-day, because they're herded like wild
hysterical animals... even though they are
given the membrane of civilisation...
      it really is a case of somehow not embarking
into keeping the latin and the north barbarian
words... how can you keep up
with ego, i, self? how long will this italian
**** of bulimia and gluttony last?
     you want to keep spewing that *******
for another 100 years?
evidently there is no theory concerning i,
there's merely an ipod...
              sure sure, you could only derive a
theory if you said the unit wasn't i
(because that would be too personal to construct
a narrative) - but had to be
   the reflective ego, and the reflexive self...
i.e. that string of pronoun compounds known
as myself, itself, himself...
   and when given the scalpel... my self
   (which becomes a reflective stance on meditating
the words, rather than a reflexive pronoun
in its original... no huh? but thump!
on yer bike! go!).
   i call them for what they are...
        yes, and my parents are great,
cooked them dinner...
   just about now, when in the 1970s and 1980s...
when the first cold war was happening,
the americans / the west merely wanted
to feed stories into the soviet union,
if every spying was a c.v. joke, it happened
when ian flemming wrote his series...
   what ever happened to a campfire and telling
stories, or when we told horror stories to each other?
  spying: can you just imagine
what the job description would look like?
pst... it's a secret.
       but you know, the americans had this thing
of telling stories to the "enemy",
     false news...
                it's so obvious now, since everyone
seems to be onto it...
     well... it's happening in england, right now,
but it's not exactly an attack scenario...
it's self-mutilation, yes, a masochism...
  you reach a real dead-end when you tell lies
to yourself... and that's what england is sitting
on: an implosion of well... the n.h.s. in crisis...
the housing crisis...
                 you name it...
  i guess there were many people out there,
willing to sacrifice their sanity, by appropriating
the excesses of c.c.t.v. voyeurism,
mingled with the excesses of ***** that paved
the way to this massive delusion of the next
jain boond to swing on a rope into a gorilla
enclosure and beat the **** out of a 300kg gorilla,
Klitschko style! bang! bang boom!
    silverback gorilla on a torture rack!
job done.
       no, i get it... a girl got to kick-box and a girl
got to play footie... cos girl can...
     wait till she don't get a: fragile heart...
like mine, writing odes about
walking past a church when the church bells ring
eleven times, and there's the moon...
  it will become very very pointless writing
about hearts of porcelain in the future,
      but just as nietzsche pointed out:
imagine talking for the entire human race...
yes, i can, or should i say could? because i don't
have to...
   the western narrative is so up it's own
*** talking about species, while the Moldovians
are talking about Ukranians,
the Poles are talking about Germans,
   the Italians... they talk all the time,
so who cares?
                but it's this globalisation vocabulary
that's halting, and making me think:
the Genghis Khan tribe isn't exacrtly in
the news? they must have neighbours!
they must actually know the people living near them...
well...
   on my street... 6 houses in a row of
identical architecture, i.e. built in the 1940s...
   first house, sikhs...
    parents went to the daughter's wedding,
woman brought over some curry,
   i ended up making even better curry...
my cat is left in their care while i'm away
visiting my grandparents,
   i get this panic attack premonition
  that i need to be back home when i'm away...
   i come back home, the cat is dead...
   we rarely speak these days...
  he was on aspirins, and yes, cats take a ******
long time to die from kidney failure...
ever watch a cat ****? cats take a shorter amount
of time to take a **** than ****...
   watching a cat **** into the toilet it like
watching a person drinking a melchizedek sized
wine bottle...
   a cat could be a man
   as a man taking a **** as in the cat taking a ****
and reading a newspaper...
     seems we're parallel creatures,
  i exfoliate and massage my **** muscles
by taking extra time with them stretched open
once the bombs away passes...
    and i'm just sitting there:
  to vank?! or not to vank? or what i call:
the 3 in 1.
        well, you can't exactly think about
lighting scented candles and doing it in bed,
can you?
      you'd have to be a woman to do that,
and invest in a good ***** replica
of a man that would only tell her:
honey... tree bears.
    do i sometimes think about putting it into
a moist couch-like environment?
   yeah... but i guess ******* is a bit like
doing ****... **** the bone and those muscles man!
   ****? yeah... never did it...
biblical regulations...
              about the same time when
heterosexuals take over from the once famed
taboo provocateurs in the homosexual department...
haven't seen a worthwhile Oscar Wilde come from
that scene for years... maybe i wasn't looking,
ah yes, they're too busy being "normal" and starting
families... funs over... and so is the art.
no wait, all i wanted to say is that
what nietzsche said in the 19th century,
  the anglophone world is trapped in it's own
end product of globalisation, and this whole:
speaking for the entirety of humanity doesn't have
and local thrill to it, no local accent,
      it's scary, to be the only language willing
to speak for the entire human race,
  and, when travelling to other places in the world
realising that you were pretty much:
not thinking, and merely talking to your self...
    i have that taste for foreign cultures...
   you can hardly hear an existential argument
in the same vein as you might hear in england...
     basically... i just think that english is
over-streched...
     in the case of russian, it's stretched:
but contained with interlocking tribes of people...
if i want to hear english sprechen in the pacific
it's a 12 hour flight to australia...
               i can't imagine talking for
the entire human race... and given this
seemingly ancient german, i'm imagining it
as the counter-argument of the current narrative,
because i can't even state that i'm in awe of it,
but more or less apprehensive about it...
given the numbers... the total anglophone world
doesn't even number that of China...
and you know, infiltrating that place with
the complexity of the encoded sounds that are
later echoed back as Xin Ping...
    who lived in Beijing...
            you really have to address either silent,
or talking about something so complicated,
that it would equal the Chinese encoding system...
  otherwise it's falling through the holes...
oh look... q r o p a d b g...
  the best we can do is make silence complicated,
since what i'm hearing: isn't exactly complicated...
on youtube most noteworthy...
   oh right, almost forgot...
the other neighbours on my 6 house line
are a Jewish family... well... sorta...
   just a literal mad-house... we get on fine...
and after that: 3 houses, natives, so yeah, english...
all of them broken families...
   the neighbours next to mine are:
woman in her late 40s... man in his early 50s...
about to have a child...
       after that it's single mother and son,
and after that divorcee and... like... dunno...
     they thought the indians were savages
moving across the pond...
              i'm sitting here having a right old laugh...
and it's a malicious laugh for the laugh in itself...
        last time i remembered
  taking a mouse from the mouth of my cat
after he caught it, and then releasing the mouse
  into my neighbour's garden...
   or a fly... crawling over my forehead
     while i took a selfie to exfoliate my face
like that of an acne riddled moon.

I feel like it’s better to listen than talk
And faster to run, though it’s wiser to walk
A field to be tilled
Or a cup yet unfilled
For this is the way of the unsculpted rock

a blind horizon   

dressed from head to toe in all black
he shades the ground he walks on piercing
blue eyes and hair of twilight
madness the desire
to leave this asylum of boredom
burns strong in his carefully caged heart
yet he lingers like a piece of lint on fabric
there’s something holding him back
perhaps
it’s the smell of hazy pollution
or
it’s the comforting shadows of tall figures

or perhaps it’s the arms around his frame
who think they know him best

tugging him from the unknown
down into the crevices of his childhood
down down down
down down
down

down

down

the thing is
he thinks he is
not so far down that he can’t stand again
he knows that his legs work and he know his city by heart
knows every street sign and every gutter
knows every turn and every crack in the black sidewalks

but he’s tired of knowing
he wants to not
no
and the unknown
is what entices him
draws him to his boots and to his nearly

empty

bag
he waits til night where it blendsin with black city
he’s just another bug crawling through the dirt now
it’s quiet but the
silence
hurts his ears and clouds his mind
it’s too loud
he has no map because he does not know where to begin
he just follows the stars laid out before his black city
and attaches his blue eyes to the brightest white and walks
forward forward forward

backward
one last look
will he come back
he doesn’t want to know

the nights are comforting, reminding
him of the place he left
behind
the days are long and hot
hot, an unfamiliar feeling
that crawls from his ankles to his brow
one long creature of perspiration
leaving a trail of novelty behind him

he’s now a crow against the white clouds
white, not grey
white, not black
bright, not dark
bright, it hurts his eyes!
squeeze them tight and wait a few more hours
wait just wait and it’ll be over
how was he to know of this blinding backdrop
he wasn’t

at night when he rests
he barely lights a fire
the flames too hot and bright
like the day he dreads tomorrow

he feels exposed and
vulnerable now in the clear, wavering air
he doesn’t like it
he didn’t know

he decides he doesn’t like the sun
he decides he likes the sun
it provides a penetrating stare he’s not used to
not the shifty eyes and downturned faces he is
but it’s so hot and it hurts his skin
his eyes
his eyes that never knew light, bright white light
the sight he needs but doesn’t want to know
anymore

he needs this
he needs to know more
he needs

he doesn’t know what he needs

he continues down the uncarved path
and doesn’t look behind
him
afraid that if he does
he will turn and go back to the knowing world
he forces his feet to pound the stones
and keep walking
walking
he already knows how to walk

there are some things that he can’t let go of
those things that he knows
and knows how to do them
they will always be with him
he knows how to walk
to talk to breathe to sleep to eat to drink to sit to stand

to run

running from the knowing
running to the unknown
run run run
keep running


stop
what’s that
a lonely other figure standing beside him
it’s a dark shade coloring the white ground beneath
him
it takes awhile
for him to realize that it’s his shadow
cast from the burning star above
he revels in this newfound companionship
he’s found a piece of himself on this path
he’s found something he knows
amazing
how something so starkingly beautiful can
come from something he’s learned to hate
this unknown balance has him smiling

he wants it to rain
wants to feel the cooling sensation
that horripilation
that awakens him from momentary slumber

he wants the wind
that invisible force that pushes and pulls
him in all directions

he wants darkness back
not just a wanderer that follows his every
move

he misses it, that vast city
that bathes its citizens in calming blackness
in dark knowing

he pushes forward
forward into the deep white abyss of
places foreign
and things unrecognizable

the unknown is tantalizing
and only the tantalizing can be clever enough
to catch its victims in a web of ugly misconceptions
unlike the black knowing miles from his feet
miles and miles and miles

his spine bends as he avoids the gaze
of the sun
careful or it will bend permanently
like the fuzzy shadow under his eyes

bring more light and more unrecognizable things
he only knew of black and different greys
but there are more
much more

he comes to a giant pool of water
with which the rim is far beyond the point of existing
he’s never known this much water all at
once

he continues to walk
he does not know how to move his arms
or his legs in such a fashion
and soon he’s buried deep within the pool

there’s a heavy silence
and a sinking feeling
he’s doesn’t move
but falls into the comforting darkness
into the unknown

you are a rock.
a stone
uncarved
deeply scratched.
under the heat
of ice
cold
people
and the heavy weight
of downing
gravity,
you transform
into marble.
reflective
unmoving
hard
immobile.
but as with all things,
there is an equal and opposite
reaction
deduction
of a solution;
fly.
be the philosopher within the scientist
and exclaim
"it's gravity that's been dragging us down!"
be the child inside the old, grounded pilot
and look up
fly.
the impact of a planet's worth of gravity
is enough force to eject you out,
soar.
view the world
and survey the oceans and beaches.
start becoming the dreamer dreamers turn to to dream.
fly.
and be the moon.
you already are.

I like to sip my iced coffee
Without the lid
It seems to look more accessible
Unlike the strings of stars
That remain in the sky; the ones
I trusted do not shine anymore
A box of Oreos sitting across
The wooden table sits nearly
Vacant and once again I’m reminded
Of you and your
Carefully drawn departure
Trailing you went all the ways
You worried that the plants
In the corner of my apartment floor
Would not get enough water
(I made a pond one day,
Scared to deprive them of your
Love like I was).
And how you only ate peanut butter
With sliced bananas
(The air smells like tangerines now).
All the soap in the world cannot
Erase the paint stains you left
On the bathroom counter next to
Your blue-orange toothbrush
Canvases are just better off
Untouched / Uncarved / Unloved
And always accessible.

vaguen
(Samuel Beckett, notation on MS of Happy Days)


I
Fire comes bouncing in from the
desert a threat to houses Here’s
what we do says the King to
Rudyard Kipling who is visiting
Stuff wet rags in the eaves throw
the silverware in the swimming
pool And my letters Rudyard
Kipling is thinking will you be
pressing my letters to your
breast as we skid towards
the car Truly diverse people
the King and Kipling one or
the other was always getting
his feelings hurt Above them
a strip of once blue sky now
dark adust


II
Nowadays there are technicians
of despair you can work at it
Going to the Buddhist study
group I pass a thin crumpled
man at a wall his face on the
bricks Behind him another big
black city legs wide apart roaring
Say you aren’t stupid then why
aren’t you happy


III
New guy at the Buddhist study
group Eyes cut to bits I want
he keeps saying So I don’t get
so he keeps saying A bunch
of sage grass has blown onto
his head and grown down into
his mind He shakes hands with
everyone over and over again
at the door


IV
I had previously been to
the Old South Thirty minutes
into the faculty dinner a man
to my left drops his eyes and
his voice says he murdered his
brother with a shotgun when
he was twelve The other diners
appear to have heard this
before On the plane home I
sit across from a vet with a
falcon on his lap It observes
the other passengers severely
Drinks apple juice from a
cup with very small silver
lips


V
At twenty-eight thousand feet
above the uncarved block of
NY state a cricket jumps onto
my coat Vaguen it says






Anne Carson currently teaches at NYU and will publish a handmade book called NOX in 2010. She is the author of Autobiography of Red, Plainwater, and other books of poetry, non-fiction, and mixed genre.

"I went through my old notebook
One after other,the pages were a surprise.
There were cross marks all over
As if the words were,all lies.

I smiled over every crosses
But then my heart felt sad.
Because I could not remember,
What did i want to write,So bad?

Just like my unfinished poems,
Are some unread books.
Few unsaid words,And the final looks.
The tears unrubbed,
And smiles unlaughed,
Few hugs unembraced
And memories uncarved.

There is a pain,And lies a pleasure
In some unquestioned questions,
And those unanswered answers.

In something that stays,But is gone.
In poems like this,Which is never a complete one.

there are so many questions to be asked.

theories of the universe
prophecies untold
codes hidden
answers bidden

flames of passion consume the artist
enrage the curious
tickle the delirious

the hill in my throat
sinks into valleys

with mustard grass that flows
prairie currents rippling through the peace
swooning deep and wide into the canyons

a diamond has many cuts and edges
facets cannot possibly describe you

my darling

uncarved
unchanged
meticulously ignorant

how do I help a man,
drowning in superficiality?

would not I rather
let the ocean lick him
the fires ***** him
the truth consume him

a rather passive existence
its all generic, like tissue paper

and my hope an eagle
perched on the branch of the universe

its all spontaneous.

About 7:30 p.m.

These are like slides
Picture frames in my mind

In the morning
Sitting in the car

The birds fly
From tree to tree

Stay with the ancient Tao

Watchful, like men crossing a winter stream
Alert, like men aware of danger
Courteous, like visiting guests
Yielding, like ice about to melt
Simple, like uncarved blocks of wood

Oh men of Tao
The ancient way is not lost
It is not lost

An orphaned sky
yet almost blue
depicting wasteland beautiful
travel save, ye lonely bird
and take care of your thought and word

a single beat, a single song
abandoned lands, a moan so long
hurting kind, oh bless my soul
melancholia will take its toll

contoures blurred
in a view unkind
the difference of
the second sight

a stone uncarved
the tide unfilled
unequation - remain in light
straight ahead
neither left, nor right
straight ahead,
nor left, nor right

things unsaid,
things undone,
things unsomething,
songs unsung,
the road untravelled,
the weakness strong,
the deeds so many
but
too many turns wrong

oh faithful breath ye gentle wind
make me see the morning light
straight ahead
not left
not right…

You are no longer part of
My world
Your name has been
Stricken.
I unmake this bond
I do not see you
I will not see you.

There is a hole in my heart
That cannot be made whole again
Because you were uncarved
And I'm ok with it.
One can only long so much
I do not beg

You are undone and absolute
This road is not a path
I am not sorry
I am happy
Without you.

This is not goodbye
This is silence
And I wish for it to
Cut deep.

I offer you peace
Without me
Carry on or not
I am now unexistence
and you are not part of my world.

The simple beauty
of an uncarved block of stone
is almost sublime.

To be everything
and nothing at the same time --
God is in the stone.

Eyes of fire set deep in gaunt, sunken face
Sun-burnt skin over bones stretched tight
Wild mane glimmers with holy light
The lonely prophet barefoot runs his race

Sat down on uncarved stone on the salt plains
In wilderness heat off’ring prayer
As arid winds tousle his hair
The sun will set, night falls, yet he remains

Chanting psalms over wastes in desert haze
Fasting, searching, waiting for One
Sighing beneath the beating sun
Searing bruised soles walking sands all ablaze

Heart heavy with the taunts of his brother
Rememb’ring mighty works long past
To the old promise holding fast
Dreaming new hope for Zion his mother

Battered by visions of hail and thunder
Summoned, plague and blight to predict
God’s edict none may contradict
Tyrants to fell and kingdoms to sunder

In threadbare raiment of camel’s tired coat
Commands for rended heart he heeds
A call from empty words to deeds
Found wanting now the blood of lamb and goat

Glancing past the veil, lo! above the dome
The glory of Him on the throne
To whom is worship due alone
Intoning a strain to sing exiles home

an elderly man in Prague threw out
his Sunday paper, in the same trashcan
he always does--for a sense of order.
a northern mockingbird still lies dead
on the steps leading to our basement
door.
the epilogue of two November nights
tried to convince the third not to show
up an hour early.
the I Am caught a red leaf while in full
stride, then let it go a few steps later.
pumpkins with carved faces are
disappearing--while uncarved pumpkins
may see another month.
the Atlantic now wears Long Island like
a sleep mask--as a Great White draws
elusive parallels under cold waves.
a broken plate was found to
symbolize the connective tissue of
character development, in a bargain-bin
novel.