Ruby Street

afternoon grey in afternoon sounding you petals leaves and leaves you what are my clothes worth what free scattering no return falling free epochs are rustling by today sounds are better than all that in floridas and gulfs and when its time is come because of this I am almost a man and washes the leaves into the sea empty glasses syllables you almost understand rat bones, black and white the dissolving skin we are all making works, I hear at our shoulders visited by crows lights light

"Everything that exists is situated. ..." Max Jacob , in preface to Le cornet à dés , 1916.

off screen thresholds become blind sky

the arrangement of air the arrangement of paper what you see and want to see words order lines space - - - ( ) -

"The arrangement, which is the life of a poem, includes music and meaning, the immediately experienced and the relations of ideas. The process of arrangement, or creation, is an essential and subtle one." Muriel Rukeyser , The Life of Poetry , Paris Press, 1996.

what is the defence of things blown at gates the ugly roses smoking half-wild with light

'Poetry seems often a talking to self as well as other as well as self as other, a simultaneity that recognizes the elusive multiplicity of what is called "identity." ' Michael Palmer , "Autobiography, Memory and Mechanisms of Concealment", in Bob Perleman, ed. Writing / Talks , Southern Illinois University Press, 1985.