Rob Halpern's A Little Lyrical Philosophy

Thrilled to receive the following from Rob Halpern, with whose permission I post...


A L I T T L E L Y R I C A L P H I L O S O P H Y
for Thom Donovan


Yes being this non-

Site you could be

Singing no with me

Too as if being

Could be anything with

Me here is not

What matters being these

Things we didn’t make

The world the one

We might have sung

Another world that doesn’t

Count here for one

And won’t have been

Here what I say

I mean can what

I say defy this

Function to name this

Function has no future

Which is just what

I thought about the

Subject ourselves not being

One as we are

I am this bald

White void this concept

Without identity or depth

A blank in being

Yours I can be

Some notion itself being

Imaginary not what’s real

Whose name has only

No world no state

Like the time when

You put your whole

Thing in my mouth

We ruptured between what

It all could be

And what this is

‘Where there is nothing

Save myself’ nothing saves

What exists in thought

I think I dread

To think what this

Really means is not


[rh — 01/04/07]


* ‘Where there is nothing save myself,’ from Amiri Baraka’s “Duncan spoke of a process”
**above image: Amy Balkin's *Mt. Everest Mall*