32. "Under the Teal Star"

Under the teal star
we know not who we are

Many go too far
under the teal star

It is a choice of weapons
Not a choice of peace

Love you whatever happens
under the teal star

1F. Astute Fruit Flies

White jet, baby cricket,
thoughts of the predawn launch.

A leaf hangs by spider-magic
slightly rocking on a skew axis.

Silver jet, pinkgold ray;
everything is loud, loud.

A golden glitter on the front of Barcelona,
loose orifice, dark aperture

swallower of my words,
pink eschaton

30. Dwale

Greeny gloom of the Great Hall now
a single string, glowing, silence

& i stare stunned at pallid pelt
one with the white. Aware, not that

time has turned the weather to tricks,
only that ill angels flutter

around, restless, this thrang room
where a Hun holds his howl away

1. APOLLIO

Yeast.
Students with pointed black shoes
are standing in line.

What time is it?
What is time?
What?

Doors.
Students with pointed black shoes
are standing in line.

In reality we dream.
From reality to dreams.
Reality is a dream.

Medicine.
Students with pointed black shoes
are standing in line.

I had never seen an aurora
or an aura
or the dawn.

Facilitator.
Students with pointed black shoes
are standing in line.

If this is a game
can I make up new rules?
Who rules?

Stained glass.
Students with pointed black shoes
are standing in line.

The fire is not burning.
I am not burning.
There is only burning.

Smoke.
Students with pointed black shoes
are standing in line.

On Making Refrains

(1) phrases which can have a variety of meanings

(2) phrases which seem to mean nothing at all

(3) something said in a moment of passion

(4) a brief quotation that sticks in your mind

(5) a phrase generated by an altogether different aesthetic (e.g. a palindrome, a tongue twister, or a borrowing from another language)

(6) a phrase that was all you salvaged from a bad poem

"A fourth posture, which adopts Ottoman poetry as a positive, oppositional political sign, should be mentioned here..." --Victoria Holbrook, footnot* in Th* Unr*adabl* Shor*s of Lov* (1994)

   Towards Ghazal, Away from Ghazal

A tradition in transplant must turn into a thing of its own origination. This is so, most of all, as its first form stays misty among unknown words. But any way of saying contains this natural possibility, though until now not occurring to bards as a distinct path. I am wanting to find it; in looking for it i am making up my own tradition of ghazal.