Poetry Isn’t Trending Out of fashion now — The long hours spent Making and doing, Turning and shaping lines, For a dwindling clientele Of other poets and academics Who might notice The grain of a line, A phrase honed smooth Or left rough as timber. No one else cares to look. And yet the trade persists — If trade is even the word — Since there is nothing to gain. A dying art Like the fletching of arrows, Or the mending of clocks With a dex

The Soul Moves The soul moves & by small degrees Of slow calculation Actuates the two substances That are body & mind. First operation is the entry of light Into dark, of dead limbs Galvanized by the sun’s power; The second is of vast dreams cut short By a harsh & loud noise, Like a fire alarm at the cinema – Enfolded in stillful bliss no longer, Soul, body and mind sit up blinking, Grudgingly resurrected – Otherwise known as waking up.

Deliquescent Bodies (Love Parade) I hope for night; it comes; it is here; it comes with rain & river, & the lights are electric. I am offered a drink & the mercury blue neon over the door catches my eye, tears open the retina, imbuing the optic nerve with cold cathode gas, ionising my nervous system to the limit. Breathing carbon dioxide, I metabolize my own body. I am a pillar of ether by the exit door. But I’m not alone. We all matter less than we did before,

A Dark Illumination Once again, we are here, as we are on this day every year, two hearts lit up with pain. And as day falls into night, a little candle illumines this dim corner where we half-appear. And every flicker, like every breath, is a discrete sensation of hurt, one after the other. It is always the same. Her sitting there, Me sitting here (still wearing yesterday’s shirt). Look at the light. How can a flame smaller than a baby’s fist,

Aither / R-O-R' Light realm of air, from which heaven came: Neither hot nor cold, neither wet nor dry. Quintessentially, it was either the pneuma divine Holding in place the classical celestial spheres… Or an unseen substance of science for the propagation And transmission of light and gravity. But now it is just a word used by chalky chemists Denoting R-O-R’ with C-O-C linkages.

Surfaces, Simulacra and Sight Simulacra peel Continually from the body’s Surface, each image Bearing the appearance of the Part it belongs to. A purposeful doubling, perhaps, but Afloat they hang Suspended as if unsure of Existence. Only for a Moment because then rapid they Migrate like birds frightened into flight. If no resistance is met, they enter the Stroma to strike the retina, Stirring sight. From there they Impact the mind, invoking inspiration. Not an engineer’s trav

Made of Light Everything is made of light. Everything is light, of differing gradations and qualities, from the big bang to the atom. Earth and sky are the light of God, and the spirit in man is a self-shining light. The light of lights is the true substance, and that substance is God. Art is the light of the imagination projected outward. Bodies are dark light, lacking luminosity, where “darkness is simply an expression for the lack of light.”

What fact makes a principle true? Quid Facti. That is the question.

Photo credit: Rachel Posner / Posner Family Estate, courtesy of Shulamit Mansbach, Haifa, Israel / yadvashem.org The Light in That Place “Our holiday has been turned into a day of mourning” -- Chaim A. Kaplan By lamp and by oil, we hunger the hours as the dusk's frost settles in. There is still time: the freight cars are not ready yet, but we are, we are ready, on this night. Sit, sit down while I set down these makeshift wicks, these meager latkes, this hanukkiah of ours, g

Light Comes up behind Light Time pursues time and light comes up behind light. One sun follows another – each circle of bright ringed by a dark corona. But when eternity eclipses time and the sun is Malevichian black, the corona will be for us a light of white – the whitest light.

Thinking of Being without Heaviness or Depth Part 1: Being and heaviness People who suffer from depression often complain of a feeling of heaviness; not just in the emotional or mental sense, but as something physical — a visceral sensation pressing on the chest or wrapping itself around the body and the legs. Some sufferers say it is like having lead weights on their legs. Among the DSM-IV criteria for atypical depression is: “Leaden paralysis (i.e. heavy, leaden feelings i

Adam (1951-52) by Barnett Newman Barnett Newman and the Art of Not Making Graven Images Barnett Newman was born in 1905 to Abraham and Anna Newman, Jewish immigrants from Poland who came to New York City in 1900. Although not religious, Barnett’s father was a passionate Zionist and a supporter of the National Hebrew School of the Bronx. As well as attending Hebrew school, Barnett and his brothers and sisters were educated at home by Jewish scholars from Europe. He went on to

Onement, 1 (1948) by Barnett Newman The Sublime Art of Barnett Newman The problem of a painting is physical and metaphysical, the same as I think life is physical and metaphysical – Barnett Newman Barnett Newman was born in 1905 to Abraham and Anna Newman, Jewish immigrants from Poland who came to New York City in 1900. Although not religious, Barnett’s father was a passionate Zionist and supporter of the National Hebrew School of the Bronx. As well as attending Hebrew schoo

in your eyes, the sun in your eyes, the sun is dazzling white, the wind shifts your scarf, blows through the gaps of your coat. for me, nothing shines or moves but the tall candles swaying. the song of the dead plays on, the music of ghosts in the choir stalls. for you, it is not the dead that sing, but angels of light hovering over the water, the spray of white ocean on their wings glistering. in your eyes a reflection of the light in the window, the same light that hits

Beneath Beneath a red lightbulb innumerable doves swim as if in a cold, gold sun. Birth, creation, a ruinous origination. Decomposition settles in. Bibulous boozers scratch at beer, flick the air with brown fingers. Intemperate cuckolds. “Declare your bones,” they say in whispers thick as honey. Time is arrested as the production of long shadows hushes the brown room, but not the annelid which eats the dirt that falls from the shade like black snow.

Sunfall Late October Afternoon: A Weak Watery Sun -- Not What it Was But Not Dead Yet.