Musty taste rises up forbidding the ambulatory practitioner
to breathe and hold the clock
Tammany hurt
but praised the school needed to forgo promises
Together
the very last fills with much ado or loss low places psychic messengers
Escalators chill forgetfulness
hasten world to chew
irresolute unity
Nice guys stay parenthetical
post facto in place
ornamental to persevere
The regulations change the price of a principality of water and the manufactured said sky and rising procedure/persecution/even fondles the hottest mountain and clutches that perfect reasonable eggshell
simulation force takes up
buying and selling part of the sky
Around the hole in the Zeus
Above the plastic fancy
Burglarized institute
rocks
magnify
max
elevates water
posit purpose
mind
remember islands
presence
presupposes newsprint
mountain
muffin Macon
sky
pry
pregnancy
sun
pledge
necessity
suggests
registration
(from memory)
rocks transform the siting imprecate purple
numbers to mesmerize reckoning to prefer
rapid hesitant water fork and precise
negative mascara purple a face marked
a drive to prosper perhaps monster torque islands
open on mothballs soup eaten taken hesitated
to minimize before magazine waterfalls awful
mountain of despair love hotel chew sincere
outstanding incognito hellbent furniture hotel
sincere procedural sky for us to pry premiumize
deputize eleven seven sixteen you know onward
for marked leftover easy measly mixed-up
posse comitatus injection false positive burp
offered present negative method blackened sun
Rocks almond the purple basketball aisle to pork lozenge elephant waiters
polish aforementioned robe to breathe seeming elevation and pile right lozenges in
pell-mell
bring onboard under wraps bronchial testimonial for Pauline time day
breaks sake to precipitate horror bugs and turpentine the town for all demonstrated
pigments
borrow seven remnant Pellegrino oyster breath defenses
Water brings thrice lime to perturb
rides these positive brick potentials honest gosh golly and oracular pleasure bell
mills in the sun feathers in the hills pure lime degrees of hesitant networks
impasto pointillist confusion bless the presence of help desk mescaline drawing
breathes the soda of loving chrome pelting weathered store disposal
pendant hostage laughter options principle no no inside snow petunias for their
impossible raspberry of neglect
takes aiming lozenge and sweats health bar Beltway ape doggerel (you know?)
brains frightened time mobile solvent and neglected within a circle of diligent
memory abomination no no Norris song rather perfect insignia and despair of all get-out
believes in our partial hillbilly dog track domination
bells this pregnant memory and hauls tongs for solid information and penmanship
Islands thwart the premise
situate the regular menace without parking oratory or eggshell benefit positions
expand the definition into the holiday harvest session...dark log
press the pelt through timely toystore bollixed hullabaloo
open Siamese dimestore tributaries of the swollen dome Pomeranian
contract to a birdcall so imitable taken horizontally
Mountain glints in particular places see the tease park a handful of grottoes and
wholesome preferences of melting sign days (you know?)
assertion doesn't follow log head telepathy song days
turns one way most holiday signpost of our solvent songbook dressage and no sign-on
disagreed
organ Tanqueray hesitance
organ purse fly damely abreast pennants
teal boost the progress difference
ice braids
inquiring intelligence domes the product before a penitent exposure surface barks and
positions billionaire summer
overflows frame for breathy teleprompter solution or fine mesquite belly
princeship
rippling muscle bakes
houses swords for birth turkey omniscient factor
paradise rush and bait the tolerated redden tennis-sphere
but no tall proctor dominance thread
no pogo
Sky dangles on a polished horse this well-positioned indelible eagle butter
deregulation pools official blood and honest deliquescent sauce article
assent imperils hardening eye store for logical racket dander
barks place the heart between toolboxes and old movies fructose breaking down
Burgundy
is simply understate and publish
almonds on bishooble
Sun...
Notes on the Text:
The four poems published here are part of a sequence of about 25 poems, "Coastal Elements," that I wrote in Maine from 1995 to 2009, sitting on the rocky coast in Winter Harbor with a view of the islands in the mouth of Frenchman Bay and Mount Desert across the water. I began them at a time when I was interested in writing what I called "unconscious landscapes," where I used aspects of a landscape, such as a train in the distance or the blinking north tower of the World Trade Center, to displace words within me that had no apparent relation to what I was seeing. I was interested only in responses that had no apparent relation to their stimuli. That became the title sequence of my second book, Window on the City (BlazeVOX, 2010). While I was writing those poems, I decided to try the approach in a less urban environment. I started writing unconscious landscapes during a two-week vacation in Maine. I chose six landscape elements directly in front of me—rocks; water; islands; mountain; sky/clouds; sun—and used them in succession in each poem to displace words within me that had no apparent relation to the prompts. Almost all of the poems in the sequence have six stanzas, reflecting the six landscape elements. However, of the four poems published here, three are exceptions to the six-stanza norm. They come from the mid-to-late part of the sequence, where the form breaks down for a while before reasserting itself at the end. Only the last poem here, "Rocks almond the purple basketball...," has six stanzas.
Michael Ruby is the author of five full-length books of poetry, including Compulsive Words (BlazeVOX, 2010) and American Songbook (Ugly Duckling, 2013); a trilogy of psychic research, Memories, Dreams and Inner Voices (Station Hill, 2012); and three chapbooks from Dusie. Recent poems have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Otoliths, Drunken Boat, and E*ratio. He is also the co-editor of Bernadette Mayer's forthcoming collected early books at Station Hill. He lives in Brooklyn and works as an editor of U.S. news and political articles at The Wall Street Journal.
del.icio.us
