Outside, Inside 9780773591776

Citation preview

Outside, Inside

25832_Penny.indd 1

14-01-21 13:11

t h e h ugh maclen n an po etry s eries Editors: Allan Hepburn and Tracy Ware t i t l e s i n t he s eries Waterglass  Jeffery Donaldson All the God-Sized Fruit  Shawna Lemay Chess Pieces  David Solway Giving My Body to Science  Rachel Rose The Asparagus Feast  S.P. Zitner The Thin Smoke of the Heart  Tim Bowling What Really Matters  Thomas O’Grady A Dream of Sulphur  Aurian Haller Credo  Carmine Starnino Her Festival Clothes  Mavis Jones The Afterlife of Trees  Brian Bartlett Before We Had Words  S.P. Zitner Bamboo Church  Ricardo Sternberg Franklin’s Passage  David Solway The Ishtar Gate  Diana Brebner Hurt Thyself  Andrew Steinmetz The Silver Palace Restaurant  Mark Abley Wet Apples, White Blood  Naomi Guttman Palilalia  Jeffery Donaldson Mosaic Orpheus  Peter Dale Scott Cast from Bells  Suzanne Hancock Blindfold  John Mikhail Asfour Particles  Michael Penny A Lovely Gutting  Robin Durnford The Little Yellow House  Heather Simeney MacLeod Wavelengths of Your Song  Eleonore Schönmaier But for Now  Gordon Johnston Some Dance  Ricardo Sternberg Outside, Inside  Michael Penny

25832_Penny.indd 2

14-01-21 13:11

Outside, Inside Michael Penny

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca

25832_Penny.indd 3

14-01-21 13:11

©  McGill-Queen’s University Press 2014 ISBN 978-0-7735-4348-5 (paper) ISBN 978-0-7735-9177-6 (eP DF ) ISBN 978-0-7735-9178-3 (eP UB) Legal deposit second quarter 2014 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Penny, Michael, 1952–, author Outside, inside / Michael Penny. (Hugh MacLennan poetry series) Poems. Issued in print and electronic formats. isbn 978-0-7735-4348-5 (pbk.). – isbn 978-0-7735-9177-6 (epdf). – isbn 978-0-7735-9178-3 (epub) I. Title.  II. Series: Hugh MacLennan poetry series ps8631.E57250 88 2014                     

c 811'.6    

c 2013-907089-3 c 2013-907090-7

This book was typeset by Interscript in 9.5/13 New Baskerville.

25832_Penny.indd 4

2014-01-31 11:50:46

Outside, Inside

25832_Penny.indd 1

14-01-21 13:11

25832_Penny.indd 2

14-01-21 13:11

1 I hear someone complaining and realize it’s me. The whine is familiar: words twist themselves around meaning disguising it from explanation hiding something. 2 I aim for words as simple as the stars I know are out there. This is the style of existence or merely what it aspires to. 3 I pretend I am writing an entire world into existence. I concentrate on getting it right. A spelling error could annihilate a needed life form.

3

25832_Penny.indd 3

14-01-21 13:11

4 The diction of existence is mostly nouns as it’s things. But they do, and become verbs. I hope to live adjectives describing what’s become. 5 And then I was born and started out and grew and found myself in the place I found myself. I set it out in words that I started out, but grew. 6 When did I know I had said that first word? Various gulps and gargles escaped my infant brain and then it all fell into place and vocalization never stopped.

4

25832_Penny.indd 4

14-01-21 13:11

7 I aim to finish but the words keep coming without solution which must mean without problem, as every answer stares at its question, like now. 8 This is nothing happening as words pile up offering direction but moving nothing not even meaning the length of an atom the duration of an electron jump. 9 I am a noun aspiring to verb seeking that join between parts of speech and meaning. Meet me at the conjunction.

5

25832_Penny.indd 5

14-01-21 13:11

10 I write with a third pen having thrown the first away for its dishonesty and another as empty after it leaked so many words. I thus abandon all future lies, having set free the convicted. 11 I write knowing the universe has no need for further poems. Or, has an infinite need which will never be filled by every poem I could write with my smallest points. 12 My words are a bridge with load limits; sturdily enough made but there are some weights just too much, just too heavy that still insist on crossing.

6

25832_Penny.indd 6

14-01-21 13:11

13 Meaning grows from words the way a tree balances its seed making something upwards spreading, leafing out and then, of course, new fruit surrounding new seeds. 14 No seed ever excuses the tree it sent forth from mineral into air. A dog will not growl after it bites. Now that I have begun, I explain it’s because I hope to understand. Forgive my failure. 15 The wind blows against my intention turning me this way and that an adiabatic journalist making up the story I need to match the events which merely happened.

7

25832_Penny.indd 7

14-01-21 13:11

16 My mind watches my mind being a mind. In the standing back, things are clear, an attitude immeasurable towards something watchable though not knowing what. 17 I will not volunteer my own afflictions because the distance from what I know and what I can tell you is what’s wrong and remains with me here. 18 I shouldn’t be able to do this, the deity’s eye view of the smallness of it all, the details, the pinpricks of light running the risk I’ll think I’m profound.

8

25832_Penny.indd 8

14-01-21 13:11

19 It took a long time to get up here dodging surprised birds and brushing cloud from my face but it will be a different journey as I head down. 20 And someone my age shouldn’t be at this; it’s for the younger, more innocent even the ignorant who know no better than to hope. Even if hope has no integer near my birthday, I still do. 21 I laugh at my surprise at the corrugated surface of my days and the sound travels down that endlessly bumpy road. It could have been song if I’d found a smoother way.

9

25832_Penny.indd 9

14-01-21 13:11

22 I collect a bit here another bit from there and the pieces begin to fit and together build a new place. It’s all construction and shout as the accumulation gets louder. 23 All action produces something, even bias. Nothing can be perfect. Not action; not inaction. Why such a large gap between the vision and the view? Knowing, and what I’d like to know? 24 Waiting is my assigned work a task I can finish by merely getting to the end which is the beginning of the next wait which time will also take care of.

10

25832_Penny.indd 10

14-01-21 13:11

25 Each question says it’s in favour of living and knowing although most is unknowable as simple as stone but complex as chemistry which is the stone’s real question. 26 It’s always a struggle a swim in blancmange or just air too full with words. I keep on. What doesn’t kill me strengthens but what does, will. 27 Each word next to its next makes a different meaning like the circular ripple of a stone dropped in a lake expanding, taking over more water until it beaches on silence.

11

25832_Penny.indd 11

14-01-21 13:11

28 It enslaves me wanting to do the right thing which turns out to be endless ratiocination, the clanking chains of logic in which I might hear music. 29 Nothing comes together as I want. The package claims “Easy to assemble” but the words don’t fit piece A to B and are apart from together. 30 If an electron has a mind I’d say it can’t make it up. It chooses a day to be today from its selves and presents it to me. But it happens to be the day I’m living. Days, each of which has a chance, then pass.

12

25832_Penny.indd 12

14-01-21 13:11

31 Electrons don’t have to know where they are to fit into atoms perfectly. If it works already why do the right thing all the time, or any time? Or even know what’s right when things don’t know where? 32 There are no seasons, no birth, old age, death or rebirth just what time passes through. It’s a curse understanding time because I can predict and what follows is anxiety. 33 Luck made me here a moment’s spark smaller than the sun, but stepping over the lintel of my life’s premises I am out, under that sun.

13

25832_Penny.indd 13

14-01-21 13:11

34 I am doing all possible things all at once but still begin sentences with “I.” An infinity of words can follow until I add the next one, and so suffer the consequences. 35 It’s all in the timing as cause must parent effect and that unruly child, event will happen and then head off to do things unthinkable. 36 Time is the clayey soil in which plants find support as roots grab the planet, scared if too loose a grip they will fly off in a trail of leaves to the stars.

14

25832_Penny.indd 14

14-01-21 13:11

37 My actions make decisions for me as my hand moves when I think it will but there’s no anger, nor ambition which explains why my hand moves except it does, and moves me too. 38 Time delivers all things no matter how addressed. Some arrive “Urgent – sign here” but most are slipped under the door when I’m away. I return nothing. 39 Decisions bubble up as gas from the organic swamp of my mind. Or so it feels, no matter what analysis I do. But I know, because it’s there popping at the surface, richly.

15

25832_Penny.indd 15

14-01-21 13:11

40 I construct my days from details things to do, to buy, to be, expecting words to be acts, and acts to locate words and not be real, except that I do and that’s the point. 41 I make lists and check items off as if that were accomplishment. It’s such a chore filling pages, filling pages like something’s getting done. 42 I let luck govern and I act on the basis of ladders, black cats, mirrors and most of all, the right numbers. Everyone has a lucky number but only the truly lucky know which it is.

16

25832_Penny.indd 16

14-01-21 13:11

43 It’s not a bad gig, the tickets free and well-distributed. The poster says it’s me and the media is all over it. How many will show up? What will it cost me? 44 I empty my mind. First goes the arising schedule, then the dinners and worry and then friends disappear and love for all things and ideas until nothing’s left, but nothing. 45 I avoid imprecation. I have the words to curse and sufficient object but a bit of fluff against a hurricane will never come to land.

17

25832_Penny.indd 17

14-01-21 13:11

46 I have the integers and the scheme they follow so can count endlessly but knowing the path to infinity does not get me there I also know why it will not. 47 I am a sign-painter. I will paint my name on the landscape with meticulous letters for Entrance and Exit. I will add my name so the stars I dream up every night will know where I am. 48 I remember now and so clearly I do not understand how there could have been a time I did not remember. I might have forgotten and lost it forever, so gone it’s gone. When it comes back, it’s not sure where it’s been, says hello, please don’t ask about my travels.

18

25832_Penny.indd 18

14-01-21 13:11

49 I wander around thinking I’m all there is but every molecule of my skin touches another molecule of the other, the entire other. I am never alone. 50 I make posters claiming I am lost and attach them to notice-boards electrical poles and the fences I know outline the route I follow finding places for my posters. 51 I sleep in another country, flights away, but comfortable. There are signs in a language I don’t know, untranslatable, and those people around me so many, saying everything.

19

25832_Penny.indd 19

14-01-21 13:11

52 There is no schedule but time, that great vessel carries everything along. In this uncertain passage even standing still I arrive on time. 53 I am a tourist on a bargain fare the deal being departure, but no arrival. I can guess the destination, place and time, but won’t know until then (and what money I’ve saved.) 54 Tiredness knows no time zone as I sleep at a will that’s not mine nor dark nor season nor moon but the bright anxiety which wakes me at the sudden turning on of the light.

20

25832_Penny.indd 20

14-01-21 13:11

55 There is no geography for this unmappable place even though sky sits on rock and there’s light from somewhere. I might be lost but I am here. 56 This is my map for riding off in all directions at once not just the destination ones but the others no compass points to which lead to the nowhere which lives off the map. 57 I know it’s not real, just acting sets, and lighting so effective I could tan. The words mean everything because they’re made up like me and bounce off fake walls.

21

25832_Penny.indd 21

14-01-21 13:11

58 A fly lands on me. A slap and then a pulpy mess: an event as small for me as turning off a light. The fly noted a sudden shadow and then a deeper one. 59 What’s right is what I do as the hand lifts for benediction or slap as the gods can deliver either. I want to do right, so lift up my hand and wait for what it will say. 60 This attempt at shrift misfires: I am guilty of nothing but enquiry and despair. Carrion eaters might meet death only by chance, but finding it, they feast.

22

25832_Penny.indd 22

14-01-21 13:11

61 The traffic constructs a highway by its determination to get somewhere: then destination takes charge, folding up the road packing it away, no longer there. 62 In an instant my car is redesigned by an overpass abutment. It took hours and a fortune to make this elaborate thing for me, now squashed like a bug against the irritating concrete. 63 I once dreamed I’d write about airplanes, the magic sky-high but I find they do not float and you have to cross oceans sometimes to land.

23

25832_Penny.indd 23

14-01-21 13:11

64 I am in the clouds bound by the stickiness of water aiming for rain. I look down at the hard but hopeful land where I and the rain will fall. 65 I hit clear-air turbulence the bottom suddenly out of things like that. Mind and memory become vacant air through which there’s no flight except knowing it’ll happen again. 66 I land in darkness guided by lights I imagine in bright enough colours and lines as straight as the flight which leads me here to find them.

24

25832_Penny.indd 24

14-01-21 13:11

67 I decide what to do down that road under the bright sky even though the road will end and the sky cloud over as daylight departs but my persistence does not. 68 I see two bands of light as the yellow of the lit-up city reflects against the underneath of clouds that hover waiting to land their rain between each colour of light. 69 The moon is full of itself convinced that its shine is polished by its own work and I see that bright pride and know I have merely borrowed such glory as I have.

25

25832_Penny.indd 25

14-01-21 13:11

70 My planet, possessive of the shine it stole from the sun intervenes. First a slice, a segment then a semi-circle and darkness and a bright beauty’s eclipsed. 71 I carry an aluminium ladder light and easy on the shoulders. The ladder is not long nor, ninety degrees from that, tall but its steps will elevate once I find a place to lean it. 72 I alight on a hard granite with no spring in any step. Ambition seeds from such hard, dark places. My eyes redden with work and there’s a lightening.

26

25832_Penny.indd 26

14-01-21 13:11

73 I had hoped hard for a time without chores schedules and obligings but when it comes I envy the uncoloured wind its clarity and direction. 74 Just getting started as always, cranked up booted and loaded with all the applications including the key one that just getting started is the end. 75 So many lives occur between buildings. I can tell by the number of windows. There are doors too, numbered and named belonging to Entrance and Exit the two great families of all business. I see that it’s all well-lit.

27

25832_Penny.indd 27

14-01-21 13:11

76 I find land to build a place that’s home. The hillside piles rocks around it and the trees grow a border. The sea gives glimpses of itself and silence polishes it all. 77 I spend this loaned life ignoring the due date and dole out the capital of the hours and days and even the nights I don’t want to pay back. 78 I gorge myself and then starve on schedule stressing my heart and its blood vessels my friends with whom I should stay on better terms.

28

25832_Penny.indd 28

14-01-21 13:11

79 My best actions are a parrot’s bright feathers in the dark jungle trying to catch your eye with the colour and flight which says, I am here and trying to do what’s right. 80 Where I live no longer rhymes with home, nor ends the trails aircraft draw for me but thoughts turn somewhere and in the indescribable I find actual residence. 81 I work in an inland city. The snow comes and stays. Snow is merely rain which worked harder and deserves its bonus of intransigence.

29

25832_Penny.indd 29

14-01-21 13:11

82 The edict issues from offices to pursue employment here as nothing else is possible. My dollar is among the billions that make a state and the deal I have also made to be in it. 83 My shallow mind calculates: money, the new year, occupation, the unimportant planning to take over or so the calculation goes. 84 I have the form in front of me. It outlines the problem the application I must approve. I make excuses, exceptions, conditions even add an extra form. I want information I don’t need.

30

25832_Penny.indd 30

14-01-21 13:11

85 I find I am short of supplies. The order went in and was specific for hope, faith, and explanation. I wished for, now believe, but cannot explain why nothing came. 86 I live in exile from a home unknown in a place undiscovered but I know where I am as sure as there are stars that need the night they disdain. 87 I act it out for an audience of two because I count myself as one and there’s this other character, all I am. I’ll pretend they’re facets of a single diamond, of sparkle and brightness as I turn it over in the light.

31

25832_Penny.indd 31

14-01-21 13:11

88 What I think itself distracts me from what I’m thinking (a small path separates and leads me away) and sometimes even breaks out of its parentheses. 89 Something blackens these pages – perhaps ink, perhaps toner perhaps some chemical beyond imagining – but with intention with a will it be done. 90 I do not want to displace the stars, although their confidence in being so far above me, irritates. Their sharp edges cut into events as they claim all future lies with them.

32

25832_Penny.indd 32

14-01-21 13:11

91 I end the day with wine and dessert the small attentions to myself afforded and permitted. Full and slightly drunk I am content with nothing. 92 And the brain plays tricks bringing to mind “October” but saying “March” as it wants to make Spring’s beginnings return not knowing they already have in the yellow drought of endings. 93 I am acting the part of a person angry at a wrong turn or a failure or a grey sky and it’s exhilarating until my body makes those chemicals and my flesh says stop.

33

25832_Penny.indd 33

14-01-21 13:11

94 Glass distorts light as it reflects or denies images. Glass impedes as surely as brick. Not everything I can see is reachable and not all windows open. 95 The sun passes straight through my dusty and smudged window. Yes, there’s warmth and brightness in how the light lines up but instead I see the fingerprints and flaws of living in the glass. 96 Mere darkness makes the window a mirror and keeps brightness inside, bouncing it back into the room seeing nothing but itself. Such darkness backs everything: wall, idea, the illusion I know.

34

25832_Penny.indd 34

14-01-21 13:11

97 My house has so many rooms for error some so large, others just leftovers of approximation, barely passages and I find myself in these rooms despite their having no doors. It’s simply where I live now. 98 I am surrounded by plastic trees and conditioned air. How to get anything done, inside? The kind of inside which takes. I must garden in real soil under moist cloud and know it could never be otherwise. 99 I am cards, financial statements, forms all the numbers and passwords that total me. Not even tangible, but the on and off of electrons which don’t care if they’re building me. No more, nor less than what I think I am.

35

25832_Penny.indd 35

14-01-21 13:11

100 Who did I pass in an airport as the anonymous faces focus on baggage and have gotten here? All those lives a few feet apart for a few seconds and then they take off. 101 I advance by good deed and fall back proud of my achievement. It’s that old virus, ambition, sniffling in the nose and making the throat sore and of my fine works, a croak. None of that’s reason to stop as I charge and pay, counting the profit. 102 I look forward, counting days as the routine sets out its shelves loaded with task and report. I am hoping for empty but keep filling what’s left avoiding emptiness, until I float free.

36

25832_Penny.indd 36

14-01-21 13:11

103 I should push harder think deeper and bludgeon an answer from the unknown. But torture gives only unreliable truths. 104 The delivery is late. I ordered it for now and am sure I got the form right and my password accepted. It’s not that I don’t have it. I worry where it might be now. 105 Something delivers it all to me: information, power to analyze the results of all the experiments and even the necessary corrections but I still do not understand and begin to think, never.

37

25832_Penny.indd 37

14-01-21 13:11

106 I take delivery because the label says it was for me. It was the answer I’d ordered but I forget to ask how I should pay for it. 107 I look good on paper with a full resume, reliable references a history of occupation with work not too odd and there are no gaps no unexplainable absences from the workforce. There it is, in black and white, the yes of me. 108 I am so civilized buying into this society thing of rules and statutes obeyed and standing up, still me now surrounded by others’ eyes.

38

25832_Penny.indd 38

14-01-21 13:11

109 I wear that business suit to complete the unsuitable exchange of invaluable time for valued accounts and walls built as surely as the clothing which insists it’s me. 110 That coat of the cosmos I wear fits snugly but allows some movement. It will not stretch nor shrink and if it keeps me warm, it’s only holding in my own heat. 111 So few answers fit their question, so leave it clothed baggily, shoulders slumping and the sleeves so long they hide the helping hand.

39

25832_Penny.indd 39

14-01-21 13:11

112 Voices come from the ceiling announcing departures, closings, specials, meetings, all the arrangements that sort my days. But there’s a whisper somewhere else, the rest of me. 113 I am preoccupied by what I do for love, salary, or fear and thus occupations fill my time as completely as thoughts fill my skin until I step away, outside, and see no one waving goodbye. 114 Ambition gets me to the expected destination I reach, non-stop, until now. The time-table is blank and I fill this square, then that, with my name and OK, but when I arrive on time no one shows up to greet me.

40

25832_Penny.indd 40

14-01-21 13:11

115 I have a ticket, valid for all the zones I travel as captain of my own passage. I dispatch my hopes against the schedule of my life and find myself transported. 116 I trust my machines, even if I don’t know the ways of silicon and plastic I know there’s words somewhere in that ware, and they emerge just as I’d planned just as I’d thought. 117 I ask my computer if it knows it is a computer and it stops being helpful and ignores my commands. It remains silent and scared of that great unplugging.

41

25832_Penny.indd 41

14-01-21 13:11

118 I devise a plan to predict me gather all the attributes what I can do, goals, and all that. It’s credible jargon, and I plan away spinning on and around my unplanned planet. 119 I get credit for getting it right when that’s not what happened. The sparrow eats its seed spills some to the soil and rain and something grows. This gangland bird gets it right. 120 I am imagination regulated by the ropes and devices the climb of living constrains me to. I am also holding back because the fall is so far.

42

25832_Penny.indd 42

14-01-21 13:11

121 The longest word I use is “but.” I can say what I want and then circle around chasing the interloper who looks so much like me. But what does that get? 122 The odds do not favour me as I play this old game of meaning never sure of the score or if I can even win. It’s a bet I’ll make and I put down all I have. 123 What can I do about clichés? I can’t change human nature and anything that can go wrong, will. I just have to move on even if it’s against my better judgment.

43

25832_Penny.indd 43

14-01-21 13:11

124 I might be entitled to laziness the earned return on time. It’s rain to seed, green against the air, at first pleased with the sun but now in drought, drying out with the small dying of nothing to do. 125 I pursue these attitudes for vacation: laziness, as there’s nothing to earn, timelessness, as no schedule and ignorance, as I’m learning nothing. I’m entitled: all that work, hours, and expertise given in exchange. 126 We each have differences and departures from consensus, but somehow make it all cohere so that my neighbour’s house stands next to mine and that closeness doesn’t spark actual arson and make ash of all differences and destroy the chance of better departures.

44

25832_Penny.indd 44

14-01-21 13:11

127 On this road trip each night draws in a different destination and the days paint in the endless bright colours of movement, of getting somewhere. 128 Even on a temporary visit in a new city I learn routines and familiarities as the inhabitants accept my new face on the surface of the days which hold us all up. 129 The city squawks in sirens, acceleration and shouts in the street. Although I need conversation beyond my skin I’m not sure this is where to end, or begin.

45

25832_Penny.indd 45

14-01-21 13:11

130 It’s just markets and museums as I send money on its way to others connecting my poverty to their wealth. I stand in front of the glass cases holding things in which my only share is looking. 131 I am an unviewed portrait in the dark hall of a locked gallery on a closed street in a nameless city capital of an unmapped country on a planet circling a star in an obscure galaxy. There, still. 132 In the mirror the eyes staring at me look puzzled until I say, blink there’s nothing to see here. In fact, mirror, there is no here.

46

25832_Penny.indd 46

14-01-21 13:11

133 I plan a lack of plans, to give me chances. I’ll go on a cruise, jump overboard and count on dolphins to rescue me. As they play with me they’ll chatter about how this fell in with their plans. 134 Dolphins believe that the point of ship’s travel is the bow wave and wake in which they swim and play. They might be right. Dreams are expensive. 135 I am an automatic motorist on a familiar route who, reaching a destination does not recall the drive. This is the usual way I am not lost, but have lost.

47

25832_Penny.indd 47

14-01-21 13:11

136 I plan journeys carefully detouring around the construction of excuses. I find myself on an unpaved roadway where the only signpost is simply worded: this is the place I am. 137 I must have prayed to the right gods or chosen the magic words as I’m reaching a propitious time when the destination’s clear, even while I’m bound by where I’ve been. 138 It’s a surprise, the amount, the timing, the size of it clear-air turbulence not something on a map, even if I can’t believe in maps because they fold.

48

25832_Penny.indd 48

14-01-21 13:11

139 I learn to get around without a map. I memorize the basic routes but guess the rest and still find places everyone gets to, mapless. 140 I stand at a high railing looking over into the dark street where intention lies, action lies. If I climb over and jump the wind going by will carry what’s lost. 141 Speed makes lines of particles as they fly by sure of trajectory; but then I am a point that might be part of a line moving so slowly, I am lost.

49

25832_Penny.indd 49

14-01-21 13:11

142 Someone put down white to make the land winter under a colder blue. I close my eyes against it dreaming green and thus live in this season wishing for mine. 143 The headache and shaking give me away as the uninvited virus has taken up its tenancy. I would evict and leave it out in the cold. 144 The cold travels to my bones causing the marrow to shiver within its hard tubes and my blood questions climate. Why live here? Is there nothing more?

50

25832_Penny.indd 50

14-01-21 13:11

145 I do have to stay warm and give that answer to blood that it matters but nights can be cold and the sky’s crystals freeze over that planet where my blood now flows. 146 My self-assurance attaches to me like that small oval at the end of a stem against the October branch but drying, ready for that cold break which will separate and rend adding to the mat on winter’s ground. 147 It gets dark early in my country the season, or my cold heart insisting on it. My eyes don’t like the dark because it stands back, asking ill-lit questions.

51

25832_Penny.indd 51

14-01-21 13:11

148 I expect nothing I say will be accepted as nothing ever is. These are just the words which make the case in case a case can be made. 149 I get instruction from voices clear if accented by the distance they sound from me. No matter where I live, home’s a foreign land. 150 I live in a bleak place where snow never stops and darkness collapses days early. I dream of bright beach-sand, warm and soft as skin. But everyone needs a place for dreams to start: where better than cold and early darkness?

52

25832_Penny.indd 52

14-01-21 13:11

151 All that out there comes at me into my breath and eyes just the facts and the air and it overwhelms so that all I can do is get started. 152 I process air sucking in innumerable gases as my body sorts out the one it wants and blows out the rest to join the molecules which make up sky. 153 I face an algebra of two variables and cannot solve it. Except this: the sun will rise, stars circle, and I will spend time under both, not knowing how I found the solution that put me here.

53

25832_Penny.indd 53

14-01-21 13:11

154 Neglect has its reasons that do not engage me. Insects stop counting their superiority and the wind forgets its travels as even the rain holds off and the mountains just stand there. 155 A mountain will accept the snow pre-frozen as they both are and confident of shape. But the land will say wait and see what happens when the sun finds us. 156 The sky accepted fog because it diminished land and that pesky division horizon, disappeared. I watch all this, unclear what it means for me.

54

25832_Penny.indd 54

14-01-21 13:11

157 The sun opens a parenthesis with its slow dawn curve and I stand under it slavishly following its day into that final fragment of sunset. Close parenthesis. 158 The time of year requires the sun to set early, or on time for the amount of day allowed. My age, or the place I deposited my life also has its requirements and a schedule no one writes down, until after. 159 It takes me a day to get it done, moving that daylight star from east to west along the curve that bounds the earth, and then it’s gone, resting while I resist the sleep intended.

55

25832_Penny.indd 55

14-01-21 13:11

160 I know the sun imposes seasons on my circling planet to make years for me to live through and it all counts especially the now cold and dark under its convincing layer of snow. 161 I fear dark, cold, and silence but that does not prevent them. I calculate change and cycle and that does not prevent them. But this moment, the sun spreads gold and jubilation. 162 The sun sets its shadows by first drawing outlines and then, the artist it is separating image from background by flooding those outlines with a black loss of meaning.

56

25832_Penny.indd 56

14-01-21 13:11

163 I chase the sun scare it into hiding behind clouds then behind horizon. When I sleep it sneaks up behind me again. 164 The sun’s helium heat brings brightness to this gloomy animal; as I make my confused fictions under clear skies. 165 I drink the water the sun circulates and breathe the air it warms. If I were a worshipper I’d look up during the day at the one star between me and nothing.

57

25832_Penny.indd 57

14-01-21 13:11

166 The sun wastes itself throwing out light the sky bends to blue and a warmth just enough for me but much less than it had. 167 Light will shape the crystal cutting it into stated surfaces and the edges such surfaces need and then the return as light travels those edges to find the surface where it shines brightest. 168 The sun investigates the prism and concludes colours but they blur into each other longing for the white they were and yet another answer turns out complicated.

58

25832_Penny.indd 58

14-01-21 13:11

169 Who is working against me? As I try for the results hope casts up? All my steps are earth-bound and gravity bends them down so all I see is the back of my head through the infinite telescope of prediction. 170 I walk on small, roundish feet on a small, roundish planet and what pushes up through my feet pulls down my thoughts. I am earth-bound, because I believe it’s gravity which makes me profound. 171 I am being followed by someone struggling to catch up yet keep their distance I sense the breath of them the determination turn around and recognize myself.

59

25832_Penny.indd 59

14-01-21 13:11

172 I find myself interrogative looking outwards for a path while inwards is a signless highway going somewhere and I will end up in the world imperative. 173 Walking my past I consider the upward steps which brought me here looking back, wind, climbing, rain, years, this hill for its cloudy view. 174 The approximate edges set out shapes. They assemble haphazardly over a random background to make the only landscape where I can see what I know.

60

25832_Penny.indd 60

14-01-21 13:11

175 Gravity attaches my feet to the ground I walk as I measure with my steps what I own that place I’ve held on to around the sun. The same spin which keeps my feet down gives me that and this ground as I take the view cadastral. 176 The planet provides a place for my footprints, each sized just so. I walk, following the path made for me, or I chose to ensure the necessary illusion I am welcome here. 177 I’m happy with this longing built on a foundation as deep as the mobile, molten centre of my planet. That’s nothing to do with calmness; it merely supports proof of what’s missing.

61

25832_Penny.indd 61

14-01-21 13:11

178 I am the architect here building a place to live in time on a foundation solid and square to the plans I dreamt. 179 Noise and disturbance: the sound extends out to its edges, if fainter and the disturbance also extends as the ripples become bumps in the fabric which is I am. 180 And it’s all worthwhile as I listen to the music the spheres send out as they circle around me. It’s legato, connected at a pace I can understand. All I need to do is hear.

62

25832_Penny.indd 62

14-01-21 13:11

181 The night’s voices don’t shout or argue but it is a dispute, because there’s more than one. In this unfair world, they might hope for resolution. The moon shines on its light ill-gotten and stolen. 182 I am surrounded by noisy neighbours who party through the night. I hear their thumps of pleasure and the arrogance of their laughter. I will knock on their door, and soon. 183 Is sin anything I want to do that might be unhygienic? I do, then ask, silently, of myself but I don’t answer because for now, it’s unhealthy.

63

25832_Penny.indd 63

14-01-21 13:11

184 I would take time off if time would let me go. But it clings, insistent tapping on my shoulder saying, now we simply must get on. 185 I cure my diseases quickly with the usual prescribed potions. And this is the best I can do, as the feeble apparatus my skin encloses subject to normal wear and tear was delivered with all warranties withheld. 186 The minutes mulct my life turning effort into evanescence leaving a skeleton, moister bits and the electricity to start again. It’s a swindle, the loss, blackness and then joy when I begin again.

64

25832_Penny.indd 64

14-01-21 13:11

187 I measure myself against the width of an electron and the span of a galaxy and in the brightness of both find I am a dark distance from my proper size. 188 Sometimes there’s nothing to outline not even the white space of cloud or snow or paper and I make up some words and send them out but they too draw a blank. 189 I’ve just been re-set. It was a metaphysical hiccup a nerve broken, a flash. Did I miss anything? Other than the smooth and parabolic in which there’s this gap, me?

65

25832_Penny.indd 65

14-01-21 13:11

190 I had hoped for simple, that single point where everything has a point but then everything but me forces decision, the points increase and this is my complex. 191 It’s all scripted the characters made up from life as they fill this artificial space with its bumpy background hoping the fine dialogue hides the subterfuge. 192 I fill my life with so much it turns my skin inside out and scatters me to the stars. I am metaphysic’s acrobat tumbling into nothing but that dark rest after which nothing’s left.

66

25832_Penny.indd 66

14-01-21 13:11

193 My discontent digs its holes in the usual places – skin, heart, and brain. There’s a peeling, cavity and wires shorting out and it’s all nothing, the kind of nothing which adds up to me. 194 The mind has cliffs, and I stare over the edge balanced a moment against wind and drop. I imagine my fall, arms and legs splayed, seeking a handhold against air. I watch the wall’s rocky finish as I fly past, failing to fly. 195 I aim for the assurance a map gives that rivers run there mountains up and down here land and sea join at a line there are other lines for road and rail and it’s all within proper borders.

67

25832_Penny.indd 67

14-01-21 13:11

196 I am in an area prone to fog a mountainside, so steep it is. I’d look down, but all is mist and obscurity except that steep slope which leads to something there. 197 I stare into yet another dark tunnel, fractured rock around its entrance. I haven’t been here a while, undisturbed dust on the prickly trees and growing grass whose seeds noted the tiniest cracks in the rock wall. 198 Concrete rejects the rain until its corrects itself allowing streams, lakes and all the hydrology of arrived water but still jealous of what can flow.

68

25832_Penny.indd 68

14-01-21 13:11

199 The sky is waterlogged with mist, cloud, and anxiety as it fails to accommodate all these out of tune things which should never have risen but now must fall. 200 The wind is loyal to its planet and direction. It stays close to its planet’s sky and although it forgives the diversion around mountain and me it then carries on, staying by moving. 201 I would tell the wind to slow down, that all this agitation does not become it. So long as trees bow down leaves fluster, and I hide in my warm house, why would it listen?

69

25832_Penny.indd 69

14-01-21 13:11

202 My eyes, receptive but unintelligent, clog with music. The melodies and rhythms pile up and I can’t work out what it means as it stuffs my head with ignorance harmonious. 203 I come to my senses. They deliver immediately and without edit. It’s all around because all around is all there is. Convenient, no? But I feel like a bedbug which believes it caused the exterminator. 204 I swing on the rope enjoying my prehensile tail which grasps, like intellect. The sign says I might be dangerous and I howl, defining the cage’s edge until, tiring of this, I hide to sleep.

70

25832_Penny.indd 70

14-01-21 13:11

205 I’m a dog on a very long leash chasing rabbits or merely their scent (which is just as good, if uncatchable.) The leash plays out and ends and what felt like a release becomes a sudden jerk back. 206 I am water, always finding the easy way down, loyal to gravity. Aspiration thus flows and solidity might firm my resolve. But it’s freezing. 207 I feel that ocean, something bigger than me, with me in it. It’s calm, and has no depth because it has no floor to stand on. I’m comfortable, floating and won’t sink, but why not, don’t know.

71

25832_Penny.indd 71

14-01-21 13:11

208 I’m underwater, somehow not troubled by drowning and I can hear so clearly the shark’s arias, the whale’s complaints and even the muffled chuckle of salt-water mollusks. Then it’s there, so clear the one note which sinks me. 209 In all this work with restrictions and improvisations the edge of words I’m stuck with second choices although I’m sure a first exists. I am that close. 210 If I cover my eyes you can’t see me and there’s no point in there being anything outside for me to see. But there is, both that outside, and yet me. 72

25832_Penny.indd 72

14-01-21 13:11

211 The sea needs its beaches to end the conversation the wind began by saying waves. I still hear distance, moon and a million sea-creatures listening as they swim the bumpy salt. 212 The land is mostly waterproof impervious except to the sea’s bargain as it laps the shore taking a watery tongue-full of rock and sand then spitting it out. 213 I settle here good water and air and, if I had to grow something, soil, but what matters are the stores nearby money in the bank and the quiet the mind makes when it needs to think. 73

25832_Penny.indd 73

14-01-21 13:11

214 We have to find our places: the rock, the trees that speak to me. After all the metaphors are forgiven where can I find myself if not in the leaf and crystals of the land? 215 My life has crystals in it small hard things that draw attention to themselves grabbing all the light then firing back a brightness that might be enough. 216 I ask for what I want out loud and pity the poor green shoot which wants water, but has to lie down to make its point. I ask with a question mark so big it hooks clouds from the sky for their rain.

74

25832_Penny.indd 74

14-01-21 13:11

217 I grow this way of seeing the world from seed sprouting from the soil of the prejudice experience delivers to me. 218 Someone has laid out the pieces – rock, tree, air, and water – randomly on my work table. To the side, there’s instructions on how to make a landscape written in a language I do not know. 219 I imagine I’m a sapling, bending all ways with the wind and the sun which are never straight with me. I am not, so avoid the responsibility of saying to sky and weather: here I am, upright and sure.

75

25832_Penny.indd 75

14-01-21 13:11

220 The words ripen from a fertile soil the air’s warmth, and adequate rain. They ripen as I pick them but then I watch them dry out their dessicated skins mere compost spread over the soil whence they came. 221 Words vandalize chipping away meaning or scrawling their graffiti on those high walls that were so clean and so clear until then. 222 The trees shade me, as they must gathering in the sky’s light and heat. Some shadows are pleasant, coloured darkly as my eyes surprise me with details of stone, stalk, and dropped seed until my walk in the park ends.

76

25832_Penny.indd 76

14-01-21 13:11

223 Will the soil reject the green shoot’s aspiration because I am not noticing? Neither the soil nor shoot will judge my failure to watch. After all, I have not yet caught the eyeless stare all the world is for those who care to see. 224 I am subordinate to what I know is true but cannot detach myself. I am a tree trying to walk away from its soil. 225 I am a sere leaf in October, facing a wind the sun delivered and the mountains whipcracked. I am brittle and the wind has announced its plan.

77

25832_Penny.indd 77

14-01-21 13:11

226 A wind-blown leaf skips over the brown and sandy grass dips, then is a moment in sky. It’s a butterfly, nimble and fickle. I know it’s last year’s leaf which lifts me up each moment of its flight. 227 These are my epiphytic thoughts gathering ideas from air and nowhere, as somehow in salts and water, there’s growth the notions put forth which might flower. 228 I have become an allergen to the memory of my own actions and recall’s mere touch on a past moment irritates it, swells it turning it a warning red.

78

25832_Penny.indd 78

14-01-21 13:11

229 The green stem and leaf provide the red flower of anger which, like all red things, presumes it’s entitled to homage and assistance. But it’s inappropriate to rage when the issue’s my basic blandness. 230 I am uncovered to the rain sensing sky’s blessing or cloud’s failure or just a way of accommodating that thirst for all water’s devices. 231 I approach the flame with the open nerves of my hand but know not to grasp, because fire uses words sucked from air. Yet fire does converse, sharing my oxygen and my ambition’s intense vocabulary which burns so brightly.

79

25832_Penny.indd 79

14-01-21 13:11

232 My words slouch a little leaning against what I want to say. They are day-labourers waiting to unload the next truck and have become lazy knowing there’s none scheduled. 233 So much gets said in languages I don’t speak but no one knows every tongue, and for each of us so much is unknown that finally we all travel in a foreign country. 234 The lines converge each carrying the message by their vehicles, their eyes used to distance, things foreground and that vanishing point that place it all ends up.

80

25832_Penny.indd 80

14-01-21 13:11

235 I am a concierge with all thoughts available ideas on call, and even feelings delivered at the snap of fingers the command, the voice to which I always answer yes. 236 I need for every accident an escape hatch opened by insight and by that golden latch labeled “never use.” I have been warned. 237 Things change quickly and I become a guest where I used to live and my guesses for the future turn out wrong, but so quickly I’m not sure where that turn was.

81

25832_Penny.indd 81

14-01-21 13:11

238 I add my day to the line which says “Fill to here.” I cannot fit more but then nothing overflows and spills to somewhere out of time. 239 This is my attempt at the entire predicament not just those little bits we call words and insects but the accumulated weight of all this is, and isn’t. 240 I try for verisimilitude obsequious to reality, but fail time and space because I am captive and master in all my own words.

82

25832_Penny.indd 82

14-01-21 13:11

241 Everything is empty until I step out and fill it with my ant’s paths codings, expressed mysteries and all the ghostly shapes that are me. My artifice fills what was never empty. 242 I am master of nothing that vessel sailing with the wind of time at its stern always forward beyond my navigation as I keep a look out for the shoals. 243 Answers fall like rotting fruit from the gnarled branches of an abandoned orchard. All is mushiness around a pit encasing the unexplainable seed which makes right of wasted things.

83

25832_Penny.indd 83

14-01-21 13:11

244 In this I hope for spike and sunshine iron and gold together at that bright line where what I know meets what I hope, including this. 245 The answer I seek may be there but not in the language I live in and it’s unfair that land and time make so many speakings to be heard by my ignorant ear. 246 If I am to correct the world and reverse harm to the stars or simply take a step forward: it’s hard, but I begin now because it will be so much more difficult when I am dead.

84

25832_Penny.indd 84

14-01-21 13:11

247 Close the doors, shutter the windows and post the quarantine sign as the disease is virulent, a dream infesting the planet. It all began with my simple seeking which turned to adventure. 248 My brain disappears as it dissolves in the light the sun offers calmly into my air. The sun believes itself a bystander and does not know what it does. 249 I am an opportunist of vacancy. When there’s nothing there I must make up something but, after first occupying merely because it’s empty space I find myself living there.

85

25832_Penny.indd 85

14-01-21 13:11

250 I set out to build mountains and begin by scraping and piling rock from the earth’s diseased crust releasing a little molten stuff which I cool with water from all the planet’s seas. 251 I pursue a driven symmetry. If one side is light the other I must colour dark but then I break down as this side of the line I’m wrong but I can never pair it with right. 252 I come home late to a darkened place the hour fumbling with the key I begin to doubt will fit the lock. Until that scratch of insertion pressure, turn, and open.

86

25832_Penny.indd 86

14-01-21 13:11

253 This is my conclusion unregenerate: I arrive at it without finding a path across this empty landscape but sure of where I am. 254 Time began seven billion years ago and will add a future of all the moments equal to all the nexts which must come and are my hope even if I don’t know when. 255 My work begins when the day begins and I take a dawn breath; things happen and pass and twilight comes and the day and I exhale.

87

25832_Penny.indd 87

14-01-21 13:11

256 I fill out the table each step, time, and place that my thinking takes but then I dream up words and the columns curve and rows merge looking more like a geometry of me. 257 Thinking tightens my face. Teeth turn to tamped gravel my cheeks become drums my skin is cling-wrap and the sinews of my lips straighten their line to silence. 258 Too much happens. I feel the planet heaving itself around the day and now my muscles creak and bruise with all the effort of simply staying on it.

88

25832_Penny.indd 88

14-01-21 13:11

259 Sometimes events will call my bluff giving me exactly what I prayed for and I discover I’ve forgotten why I wanted it, except that wanting was what I wanted, my permanent, precatory self. 260 I am the best kind of steel sharpened against the stone of experience honing at the proper angle that acute scrape which will make an edge, or is the metal just damaged as the blade batters against grit? 261 I’ve left so much behind some of it now hauls me back. I feel the half-cylinders of my dragged heels making railway tracks to a station and there’s nothing worth the struggle.

89

25832_Penny.indd 89

14-01-21 13:11

262 I act for the ones watching me from the blank, windowless walls. There’s sunlight and warmth on the other side and I imagine a shining through. 263 Meaning is a frightened rodent skittering here and there hiding from the stalking predators which are my words. They aren’t cruel, just hungry. 264 And words contain the trap that they have meaning and so send me searching but the point, rather is not the finding of it but the search, knowing it’s there.

90

25832_Penny.indd 90

14-01-21 13:11

265 It comes to me unbidden all of it in a blink and I dream of wandering this landscape so familiar, so unruly and where I live. 266 Because I have the information I assume I advance up the steps leading to the landing of pause and conclusion. Don’t look down. 267 I expect it because I knew about it. It’s an icon, subject of books stories, and all those things words get up to. I accept it as real because it made the words true or as true as they can be.

91

25832_Penny.indd 91

14-01-21 13:11

268 I collect in guilt and anxiety as if it were iron and my thinking, magnet. I could reason myself out of it, except all that scrap metal weighs me down. 269 I am being inspected against a checklist that’s long and secret. I am passive for this hoping for some report some sign I’ve passed. 270 It never is what’s actual if the eyes taking it all in blink, or cloud, or tear or simply shut and rose-blackness becomes the only colour.

92

25832_Penny.indd 92

14-01-21 13:11

271 Time wrestles with my dreams. It circles warily at first then suddenly trips, grasps, and holds pinning me down as it counts. 272 Time will be my Executor putting away my life soon after I, myself, have put it away. It will organize me in different-sized boxes and complete the immense paperwork my last wishes require. 273 Where did all that time go? I deserve an answer because I went along with it, counting moons, leaves, winds, all that circling adding up to my going along with it if so precariously, I shouldn’t have bothered.

93

25832_Penny.indd 93

14-01-21 13:11

274 In the quiet places trees go about their business under the casual supervision of birds and on these islands not all surrounded by water I find myself. 275 As surely as time moves me on I am headed to decrepitude. Aches and pains become dictators and this temple with its shrine of mind will decay until that ultimate demolition. 276 Death can be such a good career move as the body goes but the work goes on. There’s got to be something time will not erase as the point of going on is the remains.

94

25832_Penny.indd 94

14-01-21 13:11

277 I didn’t forget so much as recall other things that darkened me leaving my mind as clear as the earth when the sun scrapes it over each setting. 278 Sleep is the black-bound notebook with the blank pages where dreams draw pictures. Each night I return to the page last closed always to find a new blank. 279 I didn’t intend to be awake this late; the thumping in my head kept my eyes open and I saw blackness and the way it can illuminate my new life nocturnal.

95

25832_Penny.indd 95

14-01-21 13:11

280 I sleep, but watchful for invaders as they bring their threats and noisy weapons to this battle against the comfort of my dreams 281 Sleep spends fortunes of memory without qualm. I continue to invest and count on no return because there’s no limit on my budget of dreams. 282 Time will find me out as all particles filter through it. The great analyst, being patient assembles moments and there, I have it when I least expected it: a history, which is mine.

96

25832_Penny.indd 96

14-01-21 13:11

283 I have numerous homes in countless cities on a multitude of planets circling innumerable stars from so many different galaxies. Where’s the one home my life resides? 284 I had hoped to escape notice as the stars look to each other for the absence between them. I am in that dark between the nothing I can imagine but hope cannot possibly be. 285 I tried to change and I dumped some heavy things to add others lighter than air which still failed to lift me up. Earthbound, I worry.

97

25832_Penny.indd 97

14-01-21 13:11

286 I dream I am a supernova expanding to fill the dimension of the entire universe until I wake up and collapse inwards to where I am myself. 287 I can sleep it off. No more difficult than letting time pass as night passes in ignorance: closed eyes, regular breathing, dark forgetfulness. Dreams, only dreams make it so important it’s still there in the morning. 288 Death is such an inconvenience for all but especially the dying who are losing the only argument for life which is that going on is here and now. There must still be a coming home. It will be over the page, on the next.

98

25832_Penny.indd 98

14-01-21 13:11

289 I aim for vigilance, but still don’t catch on, because I suspect it’s all an untruth so encompassing that it might be true. My eyes stare into the eyes of what’s real hoping for a quick wink signaling: Yes, I’m in on the joke. 290 Are the dead curious about what happens after? They lack opportunity and technique. So I say, alive now myself about this curious. 291 I must wait until I know. Let things take care of themselves. (We interfere enough with our stars.) I’ve spent a lifetime getting ready for something: I wish I knew what it was.

99

25832_Penny.indd 99

14-01-21 13:11

292 I will say anything: that there’s a purpose an explanation, a cohesion to it all that trees command the rain and birds invented air. I will say anything, because it’s what I want to hear. 293 I now announce that my death will be in the future after which there will be nothing for time to delay into more future. 294 Is dawn too early to consider death? The sun is present in that dark blue glow over the black horizon yet to show itself for what will be a long bright day.

100

25832_Penny.indd 100

14-01-21 13:11

295 I’d hope to be brass declaring, a tone sweet as candy singing out transitory Alleluias. I’d aim for triumphant, bold and golden if I were anywhere close to sure I was right. 296 I am living with an unruly thought I cannot evict. Its ungovernable assertion is that I know nothing not even how to deal with it. 297 I call so many places home some even on land. Others fly higher, cloud-perchers or impaled on spiky stars. But most hold steady behind my eyes.

101

25832_Penny.indd 101

14-01-21 13:11

298 There’s always room for words. I can fit them in between stars and atoms in that space the wind makes when it encounters rocks. 299 Rock makes mountains and allows water to rest on it in lakes and seas, and supports sky too. It is the landscape’s most solid citizen. Ah, but it hides crystals. 300 I am right here where I planned. I hope this is what I was looking for. There it is, with its timelessness and slight apprehension found in that bright bit behind my eyes.

102

25832_Penny.indd 102

14-01-21 13:11

301 Irony and air disturb me and the words I make. As I push those words out irony and air combine to become the headwind against them. 302 I ride a light beam back to the sun past planets, through the surrounding dark and the vacuum empty except for this light, this final fire. 303 The world is all it can. No name, no magic word will make it more as it spirals down spirals finding that darkness which centres it all.

103

25832_Penny.indd 103

14-01-21 13:11

304 This is our departure. Our different stories set their time and direction against time but time is always now, brings time to leave and from me, it’s goodbye.

104

25832_Penny.indd 104

14-01-21 13:11