Limbic Odes

Heart Hammer, 1997

Limbic Odes constantly tests our expectations of what a poem is and should look and sound like as it travels. As poems erupt and subside into new shapes and forms, we encounter fresh suggestions constructed from the found materials of poetry past and present.... In the end, these passages move us because they summon up the ghost of tradition and yet elude that tradition. The work as a whole thrives because it is fiercely independent—able to create its own rules of engagement with poetic history, as well as with the poetic present. —Poetry Project Newsletter

* * *

IV. Reverse Proxy

Clockwise and counter-clockwise
through a map of decay, a strong track
interacts, strange the

name arose
positive or negative
or having no charge.
And then it went away again.

Properties antithetical
can live forever
slowed down to a curve
in the closed eye
of a tiny flash
of light
frozen in plastic, particles
that
in the beginning
formed:

              0          1         2        3       4      5     6    7   8  9 10

where “0” is No Pain, “5” is Moderate
Pain, “10” is Terrible Pain,

if you have special instructions for your agent
you should write them here,
directive
in advance of
the event
horizon of singularity
curving
toward perfection, or pure
subjectivity and decreasing
with each passing day

but to us, just looks dead
and better than he did in life
                                                yet
                        not yet
                                     yet
                        not yet
                                     yet
                        not yet
                                     yet

 * * *

My first book of poetry, Limbic Odes was published by Heart Hammer in 1997 in a limited edition of 100 unsigned and 26 lettered and signed copies. The book consists in a series of nine inter-related lyrics positing a tenuous site where mind and body cannot be distinguished.