I've been here before, and I feel very lucky, and very
happy, to be here again.
It's very nice to have an opportunity again
to thank the Poetry Center and the writing program and Tucson
and--
I could go on about that, because it's
really hard to thank enough.
But, I'll read five poems, and I think this first poem takes
five minutes to read.
This first poem responds to Rebecca Strzelec's artwork.
And it's a brooch based on Gregg shorthand.
The piece on the front is--
on the front, is "Apology Brooch".
Apology is read up like this in shorthand,
without accoutrements, and the hull of this word
is made in a shipyard.
During the final Ice Capades known as the Wisconsin stage,
words grew formations, prefixes, and connotations.
John Robert Gregg, 1888, crafted a shorthand
essentializing curvatures of commonly used sounds.
Diamond jubilees, Gregg shorthand textbooks,
helped thousands of married women who left the job--
the job-- years ago re-enter the secretarial field.
76 tombolos led the slim parade connecting islands--
oh, so fragile, Fra Angelico annunciating-- f, f, f, space,
tab, tab, tab, f, f, f, space, tab, tab, tab.
A secretary's speed is measured in syllables.
Sounds uttered by the dictator are broken into syllables.
I'm the commander.
See, I don't need to explain--
I do not need to explain why I say things.
That's the interesting thing about being the President.
Apology is red up like this.
It's inside, a side, becomes it's out, beside.
And so, apologies got one of the freshest insides around.
It's OK that a word is a placeholder.
The place is on a conveyor belt. A course assembly
line only for it's one self.
Word's spines tremble like ear bones.
There's just a spot of rubbing on the spine of apology
and even fainter stunning to the spine's claw.
Sweetie, there's foxing at the upper edge.
Apologies internally foxed with surface dirt,
and yet it is a value rare and not usually found
in valuable condition.
The chipping across the top edge does not affect the text,
nor, of course, does the hint of lamination.
The unnameable in near fine condition.
The unnameable, sunned, but crisp,
apology-- you are a classic in your fine, dust jacket.
Words don't like their pictures taken.
Peep at words.
They will let you touch for three quarters.
Apology is red up like this-- scoured capillaries,
clean as new PVC, flayed in layers--
not Plath's lampshade.
You misunderstand.
Apologized for naught-- my face at apologies' hull
struggled to remember the shape of apology.
Used a counterfeit for so long, long handedly
sought a scalloped apology with a compression valve.
Cut apology in half, then died.
Death says, apologize.
No, I won't.
If you don't, you are grounded.
Let apology be red objects like this- plastic shells, not
dropped.
Apology, we are so proud.
The dead light bulbs cracked.
Crusade without congressional offspring, in bumper sticker,
ready?
Here, apology based on the equation for propeller.
Apology banks, changing the angle of its' feathers,
one mile past Apogee.
All apologies are unjustified, use extra curlicues,
and have no edge to reach.
Apology walks into a--
can't see that line.
Gregg shorthand represents vowels as hooks and circles
on consonants.
Words have portals, and each portal leads to hypertext.
So you can see what might happen.
Here is Beckett's apology--
I am sorry for our lack of comprehension.
Apology can break open to polo or log.
Words produce dunes.
A dune's inside is like a word's.
A word's inside is grainy and genderless, not vase-like.
Inside a word is oar and outside is would--
so we paddle.
Inside of inside is a puddle.
As more sides are added, new meanings can slip.
Words are not boxed.
Their insides don't fit inside--
mine neither.
Typewriting and shorthand are my keys to the workforce today.
Eight, eight, g, g--
the thickness, length, and position of strokes
are all significant.
Apology after stroking can become a tombolo.
All I have are the most peculiar letters, the round,
and the dangly.
I offer them without suffix or pretense.
Not idealize-- don't you think it though--
It's tautless such and such, so underdone,
what a production number sung out, out, out.
Not rewarding as wished-- if you would like a free upgrade--
sunny, hunker, no beach umbrella,
solemn love for the idyllic, gold scene, solemn belief
in the small crop circles surrounding the beach grass
patches.
If beach grass, beach roses, beach la la la
could hold the page together, no trembling,
we couldn't get anywhere.
You just want something to think about, don't you?
Vacant.
Only inside once.
Said he'd rather f, f, f, space, tab, tab, tab, than
sit in that uncomfortable chair.
There's no way to repeat that.
Your moraine moraines.
Paper flopping over the typewriter,
the breeze is sounder--
sounding.
Apologies inside is protected by the overhang of its letters.
The vine around apology makes it diligently tentacled.
Apology, as the absence of what ought to be, lulls in place--
can hardly keep its place.
Nobody knows if apology is filled with silt.
Here is Eliot's apology--
'getical cats.
How a word is affected by its use-- in dormant states,
a word's inside gets more liquefied.
Since a word's inside is already liquid,
its liquid state is past liquid.
Words arrived in boxes.
We recycle the boxes.
Can't flip over to the map as if seeking the key
to Whitman, or Godiva chocolates-- bonbons and not so
bons.
Correct.
I apologize for the fickle and un-lexical.
Let apology be for whim cycles.
Synecdoche your umbrella.