ing ear*

to Jalal Toufic




Silent demonstrations in a wilderness in a wilderness where we meet in the sea you meet me in the sea because the sea is calmed because the sea is calmed it is a violence they are a violence of these silent demonstrations the waves demonstrations of an atom splay the screen we always watch we watch in silence escaping an awareness of audience

The meaning of every adjacency not merely arbitrary because there remains a world because there remains a world in the world we are a meeting more or less violent of waves in the sea their silent demonstrations fact of our watching protect me without from a murderous scene murder an image turn another page

Of our own watching she gave her back to me on a postcard advertising our own watching a murderous fact of the waves the screen is here for everyone to see the same vision these two taken together yet how distant they are

On a postcard of paradise guarding the guarded so we mark this watching an image can be murderous or the lack of all distinction an extra sound to our voices in the sea those silent demonstrations seabird calls repeat

Her back to me means we must protect each other from power overhearing our own watching a murderous fact let’s retake seabird calls a calling before the sea to find for an image protection fulfill this nothing

Fulfillment of this nothing of this nothing of this blank repeatedly the fire what is called the fire the fire what is called by name but if you call us by our proper names do we respond to history what is called from fire from heavy fire in those hills

On the knees on the knees for the night and thin thin for this burden this burden the body won’t eat is it for want of names for murderous facts or other points in space

If we can advance points by these circles fulfillment of this nothing the futility of our travels discover nine planets begin on the knees for the night and thin thin for the image compared bursts into instant song calming a frame a frame of wildness flame from dry strips of cloth and twig











In the woods losing the name you would be called by or in the mirror presupposing no life of the name that would guide you through this night that must be left to other hands

To other hands heavy fire loss of boundaries and gaining gaining upon the image directly a beam a beam from the bulb of our guided hands

Guide of our hands the illusory plucked petals of this time resurrect me resurrect a name without boundaries and magic magic of those progressive reversals of springtime

Gaining the horse upon the sound of the gulls tape displaces all voices images of a voice out of synch the small atavisms of these ways

Presupposing Chernobyl Sarajevo Iraq Palestine Sudan Rwanda Hiroshima Auschwitz Armenia...

Misinterpolations taken as amnesia
The latest life of the dome
Of the dome accruing to it the life of the countryside
Of olives figs milk and tea
Of the last taste of honey in a collective time
Stutter the passage of this recurrence
Points on a shifting interval of travel
Guide of our hands the illusory plucked petals
Every moment is initial of this springtime
A renewed assuming of names


















For how long the guide the guide of our hands through the streets these bombs no longer touch the distance of our ways they must be a unity of form to have remained alive for so long

Bring me to my name again forgiving that I have been gone from myself a little monument of a larger unity I hope these bombs won’t touch

His bleeding feet the animal when we arrive has called to me to bring it food a project of these calls across these desert walls their functions

A forum of gravity be a unity of form the animal among the traces of these walls what gazes is always of ourselves lately we have come to guide the guide

But let the aura be the means of our geography therefore our memory multiplicities declaring no light has yet arrived

But let the aura be a light in the world again after none could be called by their true names in truth the stones failed us so we kicked them down substituting for each petal a similar blindness of sense
























It arrives to arrive the beloved not merely loved a bead of these ways in caravan to see a wall as a prism hope of new phases

She is walking away from me in that garden where the guards are guarded and don’t speak to demonstrate the violence of an image she walks away with a horse it turns three times slowed by the edit on a beach before the broken waves

She walks away from me from me so I may see her name as a back turned an injunction to turn to guide the guide back

Back to me if we could be a name for nothing for nothing presents this green of a name of petals what virtue in reverse reversing power a pride of fathers plucked kingdom within a kingdom inaugural

Here to hear to hear this violence not seen seizes the silence of a violent naming Lear of a drama of power silent again after images in paradise the lines went spoken














To speak those lines those lines weep

of which we are nothing
an argument
demonstrates the waves

of which we are
an unsaying
of these horses waves ways
drawn away after the storm

no violence can accomplish this
an unmaking of forces
in a painterly universe
the frames of nothing the
titles record







those horses waves turning spray
spray no books with no letters no pages
pages became undeveloped
no violence can accomplish this unsaying

to hear those lines those lines wink
drawn away after this blank space
perhaps no one truly listens anymore
an argument in silence demonstrates the waves
non-action of her point

non-action in a painterly universe points
a universe of the gaze the horse draws away
non-action in a painterly universe
a field for the high and forgotten
surviving the forgetting

of children surviving
the forgetting of these lines
generation does / generation does not
non-action in a painterly verse
obverse of the gaze
shade towards forgetting
a field

weep for the forgetting
forgetting of those lines that weep
generation unsays its lines
this horse breaks into
its reverse
so can the waves



waves silent violence
heard for every new love
playful spraying a book
longing to be heard
and therefore seen
seen and therefore
heard

substitute these lines
these lines these
petals for me

substitute these petals
these lines these
petals
these lines for me




In a blank time
*composed Spring '05