'Or of your time sense in no time'

for Eléna Rivera

'[...] the vast sorrow in between
what is reported and what one sees'
~ Eléna Rivera

'now-time' or of any century sut
ured so 'this is this' what is meant
"I" was that 'cincture endemic to
no one we boarded a non-sense
non-entity of trains the police

police they asked for the man's I.
D.--"you understand I.D.?"-- lik
e he was a moron and not one un
derstanding he was human at th
at moment utterly interpellated--

accused as always so difficult to
get the animal 'breath' back it's no
t easy being undead when we wro
te the poem the poem wrote us b
ack into life we asked to have ey

es but all we were given was com
munication--a 'bare life' for sign
ificance--referents towering com
mand our sorrow in fact you are
in Sante Fe and not here and I am

not in Sante Fe and not here also
what distance must I occupy to
have sight to save face from hard
ship proximities with which we
"deal" otherwise--'a many girded/

where mercy sleeps soundly'*--if I
am to fathom anything at all it is
the smaller frame of your words
their distance as Oppen taught us
to trust words as things otherwise

in their seeing than 'reportage'--
an event all our own but shared
if to overhear is to see I saw him
say 'swimming is to cadence as
music to breathing' but we are al

ways drowning likewise by rhetor
ical possibility 'at the war' we fou
nd another time other times and
these were sometimes adequate
to continue to face reality as if to

continue in some assurance or s
urety to continue with the names
as they fall away to sound to clu
tch a fragment figment vast in its
presence against 'society' per se

to endure 'age' as it flows upon
us an external pressure Stein sa
ys WWI made everyone 'Modern'
so what does that make us a ser
ies of ones valued for being con

temporary a civilian war of the m
ind and body as it continues in t
heir market aether 'Not Saleable'
one disclaimed but then she ide
ntified herself principally with the

market crash that seems immin
ent against any historicity will on
e build a better commons made
from waste products the sky has
become hasty and the ground no

t much better with impatient dan
cing 'mother fucking crazy' an ir
onic twist on the Rap song if the
re ever was one--'all I want to do
is - - - - - and take your money'

--while the 'real' guns fire in a di
stance of sense an ironic sense o
f 'missing in action' as if missing
itself were without an alibi--rep
orted though never actually seen.

*this line and the epigraph above are taken from Rivera's unpublished "Movement in the Upper Region"