the opposite of

All right, here we go

In the Atmosphere, Thoughts of Taryn

Let me whisper to you in these narrow Czech streetslike the signs say things like"Limbs do not need muscles to dance"

Like the man who is talking about airplanes.How you can feel gravity.The way he can't choose between the words "tilt"and the more clinical "incline."

Talking, of course,of the miraculous geometry of takeoff,and, of course, the question is useless.Neither one is correct at all.

Of this maze of aisles and rows,and the metal tables in front of the cafésand the way the bricks refuseto only be brown.

Signs that say things like"If you have seen the blue horse it is already too late"are peeling off of walls and such.

Downward is a very dramatic direction for a city to move inOr an airplaneand this makes it so much more exciting than leftward, in a sense.

In the Purple Light

Into the fog with the leavesmelting upwardis not quite so clichéas one might imagine.

Think about how unnatural the purple light,the way it is perfect for the city,the way they are building sideways nownew forests and buildings,from the walls of other buildings,and how they are leaving the forests in peaceand how it is this peace that is hotwhen you find yourself, to your mild surprisedrowning and keep walking.

The people in new forests form their own primitive tribes,try the whole primitive tribe experiencewith no toothbrushes or anything.

They put on a great show of it,in the purple light and all the tourists love it.

There is a billboard that says…#1

WHY NOT ASK THE TREES

For a Discount onTires?

There is this Fashion #1

There is this fashion modelwho grows oranges around her neck and gives them to all of the people in the desert.

For three years once, she disappearedand returned, proclaiming "I have seen the mountain!"

Around her necka hundred oranges had grown wingshad flown away to be with their loved ones for the final days of their lives.

She built for the people of the deserta great and wonderful tower,and they all climbed into it and sleptand it crawled back into the ground.

Millennia later it pops up,at great inconvenience to the subway system of New York City.

There is this Fashion #2

There is this fashion modelOf eggs

She opens the doors of her.Inside there is a tiny version of the sun,

complete with a very small planet,complete with all of the trees

arranged so neatly into rectangles and other geometry

and there is even a little version of you on there.

For only fifteen Euros,you can buy a magnifying glass and watch

as he does all of his little tricks,starting with the “get born”

and ending with the ever famous “death.”And even in the middle, he does the“have a major epiphany about life”

You will always leave the show a little disappointed and unfulfilled,

but it is worth it I think because it is such a bargain.

The Hazardous

The hazardous nature of train poetryYes, it is the way letters fall between cracks

I am speaking of and long tunnelswhere there is only concrete and lightbulbs to look at

It will be enough to wonderabout He-Who-Changes-The-Lightbulbs.

About the weather it is impossible to say real words.I am confident clouds have never been described

in the context of anthropology.I am confident clouds have never been described.

Yes, it is even the weather that is no longera form of magic. It is even the way the ship

is balanced precariously on the neckor on a stack of strange objects.

Yes, it is even the sculptor who occasionallycannot bring the clay into being.The clay is a falsehood in cubes.

The cubes are brash falsehoods in the face of the yellow air.The clouds today are Zhang Dynasty clouds, I'd say.

There is a billboard that says…#2

The whole world is a parking lot

And I am trying to figure out

Exactly what that means

This Wetness

There is this wetnessthat lives in the real worldand we build lots of very nice wallsinside the shimmering wetnessthat gives us such nice umbrellas and rooftops.

We gather every so oftena large pile of thank-you-cards.

The wetness moves them with it;it moves in downs and back upsand we build tunnelsfor the ink and bits of paper and all of the insectsthat mix together so casually.

The buildings dissolve sometimesand go up, looking for a starting line,and also the builders goand their scaffolding and such

Dachau

A man can sculpt pain; Make pain space,or make space pain;Such heavy water inside him.He sculpts himself a sieve

A man answers yes to the question of a river,flings into the river the offeringIs trampled by the black camel of riverIs cut by the white scissors of coldIs drawn from the riverIs fire until he is smoke, which goes up with prayer into the sky.

I have often heard complaintsthat my prayers are too crystallineThe way a dulcimer hammer can shatter themis music not sin

The way I am writing a sieve

A metal fork and a metal spoonring out in midnight."A thousand people are hungry and even they are singing,"I accuse you.

Three men complain:It is only scale that gives to tragedy its stickiness

Fairytale (Reprieve)

The squirrels and the moles and the deerand all the wonderful little creatures of the woodlands

move into the cityand have a lovely little gang war,

and it is so beautiful;they do it much better than the humans,

who stop stabbing each other for a while to watch.

Eventually, the city stops movingand they keep going

and the air is getting sharper and sharper.

The Pianist

A river mountainous, and of sculpturewhere the pianist of such bright graffiti growswhere the beheaded man walks among slugs

the pianist of the great lungs of history

Yes, such glorious fleursin bottles and glass cases

and porcelain ladies with fleurs for headswho walk around and say hello to each martyr

with such poisewith such poise as a great pianist of all gardens

Yes, where the pianist of such goldlends to the city such texture.

The texture of the city of skins.

Such massive bell around his neckthe pianist whistles and steams

away into the sky.

The Piano Tuner

The way the piano tuner comes still everydayto a house with no pianoand tunes the pianoin a house that was not built by anyone

The way it is the swans that are your terror

The way it is a haunted house in your bones.The way you are a saint when you have no eyesThe way you, on the street, attempt to sell your ribsto those almighty and gloriousthose of lemonthose of tour

The street is literally a florist.It hands you some roses.Inside the roses are those angry German beesThose German bees of winter that in a blizzard of mintgive you something grand and eternaland ultimately useless

The Water Says

The water says"my name is lukewarm"

It plays the guitarevery Wednesday at the cornerthe eternal search for resonance

the tallest echoes in the world are herebeneath the newness of it all.

A man walks up to you and saysI think they want me to talk to you

about the scaffoldingthe great sheets of canvas.

I think you maybe need a new building of you.The building of you falls downat really no provocation at all

if you think about how numb the universe isto your earthquakes.

I can rent you a crane if you need one,and a construction crew.

There is a billboard that says…#3

Wow I am so pointless and self referential

Someone should tear me down

And maybe put up an ad for multivitamins or something

In Which the Poet Fails to Convey to the Reader a True Sense of the Almighty Importance of the Subject Matter

orIn Which the Poet Slashes the Poem to Death with Knives, and Continues to Stab even after it has Bled out and the Clouds do not even Notice

Always the question of cloudsYou have told me about the train wreckYou have told me about the winterWhat were the clouds doing?What were the clouds thinking?

I am convinced more and more that clouds are the most important thing.When I am dying, having never become a great artistthe clouds will still be there.They are so unbearably large.

This is why the divine geometry of airplanes.

Your buildings are nothing to clouds.You have told us about the buildings;the spaces between gardens.You have not told me what the clouds think.

Airplanes and the occasional mountainare just things that are above a layerof slow, everlasting, boiling, soft milk.

A man built a pyramid below the sky.The clouds in wisps barely gathered themselves for the event.A man will die in a desert in a large mound of stoneand people will look at the stone and not the manand the slaves who look down at stoneshave no pyramids.

The purple light and the piano musicand the way sculpture is holy.But what shade was the sunset?

The clouds are laughing at the limited color palettes we use.We could be rid of the color blue and have a white sky.

A man sees that the tunnel is closed and still doesn't reach for the breaksand the train goes into the walland the clouds go gray and loud.

Fin