Reading Script from the Spoken Word Cafe Event
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Transcript of Reading Script from the Spoken Word Cafe Event
7/27/2019 Reading Script from the Spoken Word Cafe Event
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/reading-script-from-the-spoken-word-cafe-event 1/28
14 POEMS
JOEGONNELLA
7/27/2019 Reading Script from the Spoken Word Cafe Event
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_______________________ / 60©2013 Joe Gonnella JoeGonnella.com
@jgonn
7/27/2019 Reading Script from the Spoken Word Cafe Event
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Table of Contents
• Invitation
• The Lesson
• This Stone is Yours
• Basset House
• Instructions for Departure
• Tool
• Auto-da-fé
• Meteors
• Parmenides
• Elegy for an Absence
• Danse Macabre
• The Infinite
• Chart
• The River
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Invitation
Follow me down
The river road
Where mistressturns
Indecent children
Into antelope.
Follow me down
Under the bridge
Where wounded
water Marries the marigold
And feeds the poor.
None hunt there,
None are harmed there
Where mistress
sings
And pebbles
Are mischievous pennies.
None are warned there,
None sleep there,
Where each boat
sinks
Out of spite for the sailor.
Follow me down
To the cavern
Not as big as a heart
At the sea’s
center
Where the seed should be.
Follow me down
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Where hours
Ring out like worried bells,
Peal on peal,skin
On skin, ‘til we find
What mask makes us whole.
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The Lesson
My father heard the wind that summer night,
Saw the moon come up over the wide fieldWhere he had set the telescope and held
Me to the eyepiece until, with starlight
Burnt through every nerve, I squirmed and cried,
There are too many fires in the dark.
He did not laugh then but led me in, laid
Me down on my good bed, touched my forehead
With his hand, whispered me to sleep, I wokeTo that memory, bright enough to blind,
Of stars, clouds of stars and luminous space.
When dawn came the sun was a sadder gold
Than I recalled. In daylight I thought twice,
Said I liked stars but hated being held.
He laughed at that and never said a word.
When night fell he taught me where the great bear
Was, how to find the North Star by the pair,
How to test sight like the Indians did.
I told him I could see the double star.
He never knew I lied. When he was done
He brought an egg-crate out, lifted me, left
Me to watch the whole sky alone. I kept
Staring through that lens at the white half-moonUntil he called me in. When I had crept
Into my bed, my goodnights said, I could not sleep
But leapt to my window where all I learned
Waited for me like a dark gift. The deep
Night quick with lights that burned and burned and burned.
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This Stone Is Yours
There’s a stonethat fits the hand;
a stone
that has nothing to do with cobbles.
There’s a stone
that can be raised
and brought down
like an eyelid;a stone that finds
what it wants to find,
no matter whom it sees,
no matter where it goes;
a stone
that has nothing to do with walls.
There’s a stone that knowsand then forgets
and then knows
once and for all
what it wants to know;
a stone born of a bludgeon;
a stone like no other,
it can’t be thrown,
it can’t be juggled;
it fits the hand like a well-made glove;you wear it like a suit,
it wears you
like a hunger.
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Bassett House
Nothing moves
In this stillness.
The stars are masked.
Driving here we found
We were happy. Now flames reach
The top log.
Smoke rises
Through the flue.
All the tools we need
Are by the hearth:
A straw broom
To brush the embers back,Blackened tongs;
Enough tinder
In the scuttle to rekindle,
If the fire burns too low
And four hewn logs
Stacked in a bin
To feed the flames that
See our evening through.
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Instructions
For Departure
I
A door is opening
before you; its shadow
brings no peace.
Leap into the armsof its echo; nurture
the wanting. You’ll be
as courageous as a star,
certain in the knowledge
of your burning.
Share in the fate
of leaves and leviathans;
dance to the music
of your passing.
Tame the beast you can’t
dismember and make
of its terrible visage
a mask of repose. Unleash
the stillness within you
until the fragile void
has no choice but to blossom.
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II
There’s an anger
beneath this fear that will
flare with each denial.
Grasp the brand
until the worldyou can’t enter is
extended to the limit
of the flame’s bright reach.
The room you build
will travel with you,
serviceable as a snail shell.
There’s nothing
in nature that does nothave its reason. Absence
will be baptized. Echo
will have an answer.
Practice the magic.
Accept the miracle.
Self, death’s chrysalis,
engineers no exemptions.
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Tool
to make a tool
implies a future and
an agreed need
words are
independent
of their objects
a lion enters
only when a lion
enters and not when
I whisper the word
for lion wishing
a lion would come
there are words
in this world
no lips can speak
there are words
in the world lips
were meant to speak
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Auto-da-fé
Instants, hours, days and dawns
Dance to the laughter of the passing year.
Partnered by the moon and sun
Real things exit, real things come:
Sunlight gilds wind-enchanted leaves.
Minutes, sunsets, months and seasons
Forge memory's bright tools from dreams.
A future, self-conceived, redeems
The emerald echoes of its past
By knocking on the only door there is:
Leafless branches frame cloud-entangled trees.
Seconds, decades, centuries and eons
Spin even atoms into swirls of dust.
All planets begin as densities in flux
Each night is blacker than the next
Until obsidian centers flare sapphire
To blaze the scattered foliage of proto-suns
Into jewels of self-consuming fire.
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Meteors
You were the one I hunted and never found
In all my games of hide and seek.
The Indian forever drawing his bow or the white man
Refusing to leave his homestead for the fort.
A troubled companion of my ways,
I remember you walking one foot at a time
Up the steps of the path to my father’s house.
Your face as long as ever I had seen it,
As if you were engaged in some internal conflictOr immersed in an unfathomable reverie
Meant only for that other you kept entirely inside you.
Together, we looked into a sky we could never measure.
We gazed past clouds of stars that hovered at the edge
Of interminable darkness. Lucky as we were,
We caught, out of the corners of our eyes,
The bright streak a meteor cast down to a black horizon.
I asked if you thought stars could die and you said yes.We were at home in spite of ourselves.
The clothes in our closets were just our size.
The slippers under our beds knew the shapes of our feet.
Our shoulders filled the jackets we had on.
Crickets, vibrant in the grass, seemed real in the dark
As we walked through the volleys of their noise.
We had no notion there was damage to be done
In the wide world. We held the stars too closeThen let them go. The battalions of night retreated,
They disappeared one by one; lights so small, so distant,
They could not keep us warm that night or ever.
Still, the stars taught us their secrets. I counted them
From the hill’s top, where other boys had stood. The sky
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Wheeled around its center. We watched meteors
Etch their courses down the dark, until daylight drowned us
And we drifted into the light-blind streets
Of grown-up cities where markers for self and other
Are placed on a map of the world as a strategist
Would place them on a field of planned contention.
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Parmenides
As mist burns off of a morning— as smoke dissipates when wind blows—
my words fade as you hear them.
As truth dissolves into falsehood—
as birdcalls vanish into night—
these letters disappear as your eyes
pass over them.
My lungs release the atoms
they’ve captured
back to the stars that distilled them.
I learn what ambiguity teaches.
Some knots will not come undone.
What I dream is not what I sense.
What I sense is not what I think.
Some thoughts are mine alone.
Blindness comes from such staring at the sun.
A budget of fallacies leads
to an economy of loss even for those
whose wealth is limitless.
Untie the knot of thought.
Solve the puzzle of words.By that resolution to be born
again and again and again
in endless argument with a sun
that comes up fresh each morning
and disappears again each night.
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My words have teeth.
My silences are full.
My arguments are beautiful.
My hand exists as a hand.My eye is as sharp as a hawk’s.
I circle my prey and I dive
to eat what is under my talons
until what is not becomes me
to be born anew by the name I give it
as it dies inside me.
My mares lead me where I most desire
even to that point where Apollo
cedes dominion to a refugee like me.
My horses strain against their burden.
I travel the road they’ve chosen
preceded by guides the gods selected.
The axle of my chariot sings
In its sockets as if at the heartof all that spinning a pipe
is being blown by a shepherd.
Casting aside earth’s veil
the daughters of the sun lead me
to daylight from night’s deep.
At the crack of dark where dawn should be,
at the crux of contradiction,
all numbers contract
to a singularity.
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Gates of stone—
rock above, rock below—
prodigious doors tower
to vertiginous heights,concealing the kingdom
I have come to map.
Wherever I start won’t matter:
for the man who turns
on the pivot of what is
every step is the same in a circle.
Words are the arrows
by which I pin objects down
into the field of what exists.
A word which denotes nothing
is as hollow as a bone
from a creature never born.
Those who walk the way of what is not
are lost and will wander forever
between confusion’s ceiling
and a borderless floor.
Unasked questions have no answers.
Unwhispered secrets can never be revealed.
Without puzzle there is no solution.
A lie unuttered can’t be countered by orphaned truth.
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There is no other choice:
what is, is and what
is not, is not. All is a unity
into which plurality foldslike the wings of a hawk
perched on a limb
just before it hunts.
The doors of the kingdom of justice
swing wide for me— this road
was meant to bring me
good fortune— as lonely as it is.
All answers are mine for the asking.
The merest wisp of passing opinion,
the perfect sphere of fearless truth,
everything is open to me: the ephemeral
and the everlasting just the same.
I smell the scent of truth
on a wind rising from the east.
I see the heart of dark
in what comes later.
I taste the brightness
that falls around my shoulders.
I still the rush of time
by the movement of my limbs.
I hear the sun’s chariot
rolling in its track back to the dark I know will come.
There are no beginnings.
There are no endings.
The world I name
is the only world I know.
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Elegy for an Absence
I
There’s no map to trace the geography
of days we shared. Buried in
the quotidian of our diaries the unexpected
schedules its own appointments.
A red moon reckons the sum of stars
and misses one: an unforeseen absence.
Could I have wished for you another day?Another whisper? Another touch?
What was it you found in anticipated
darkness that invited you to choose
to enter when you did? Did a new moon
beckon between chasms of cloud?
Will the darkness you drank be enough
to slake your thirst? Or will your will
insist on a colder freedom, the freedom
of a beggar who doesn’t choose
what others would but whose sigh rises
like smoke away from daily fire
toward a sky where accumulated
suffering condenses to satisfied desire.
II
Come back late, no place to go:
level the base; square the sail;
center emptiness; chart the course;
bet the house; buy the farm. Uncommon
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choice to move into a silence
no words can describe. Let her rest
who wouldn’t have asked for these words
in elegy to memories that never were.
Today when I think of you stone will break,
walls will fall, sky will darken and the tomb
your ashes don’t occupy will openand embrace what’s been missing
to complete an emptiness fore-ordained
by a plenty made insufficient by spendthrift sun.
As sand in an hourglass falls to where it
belongs, substance is exchanged for hollow.
What was withheld, is reclaimed. All cycles still
at a long horizon where bloody sunlight
tints you larger through the convex lens
of earth’s atmosphere into something
neither of us knew you would become:
a phase-less moon; a certain, shining thing,
luminously inhuman, in frozen night.
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Danse Macabre after Holbein http://www.dodedans.com/Eholbein.htm
The Chairwoman in her boardroom
On her leather chair,
Chiding her directors, will greet,
Whether or not she wants to,
The lord of bones.
The CEO on his jet, rushing
To a meeting, rushes, as well,Into the cold grip of the harvester
Of men who waits for those
Who will not wait for others.
The COO, berating his subordinates,
Stops mid-word when
His devil whispers come
And death’s bony arms envelop him
In endless calm.
The CFO wakes from her dream
Of balanced books and predictable returns
To smile into the face of the skull
Who haunts her through divisible days
Down to a final sum of sun.
No matter how massively parallel,Mirrored or redundant his distributed
Systems are, the CIO, on duty as always,
Will meet with the disaster
From which there is no recovery.
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The EVP, in her corner office,
Will be cornered by the collector
Of souls when she least expects to be
Even though no budgets are due
And everyone’s forecasts are dead on.
The VP, smiling at his superior,
Will frown when the grim dismemberer Remembers him and every project
He prosecuted will become
Someone else’s victory.
The Director may face the face
Others fear but the fearless reaper
Has less to lose no matter
How brave the aspirant he’ll claim.
Cowards’ or heroes’, all bones grind to ash.
The Manager, working late,
Will hesitate when she looks up
From whatever’s overdue
To see the collector, who brooks
No delay, ask her for her final pay.
The mere Employee is not exemptFrom what all others owe. He shoulders
This burden as he has his others
And willingly obeys when the last
Commander asks for what none can refuse.
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The Secretary’s secret remains a mystery
Even as the eater of souls devours
What she’s withheld from colleagues,
Bosses, friends and lovers. This hunter
Knows nothing and reveals less.
The Janitor has no time to clean
His last latrine or order his jumbled closetWhen the prince of disorder makes his claim
On him. The most disciplined practitioner
Surrenders just as the laziest must.
The Un-employed are spared most everything
But this. Free from all meetings,
At their leisure to wander where they will,
They come when recalled
By he who will employ us all.
The Homeless, with nothing
They can call their own, with neither
Roof nor reference to their name,
Will find their home in him
Whose embrace none can escape.
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The Infinite
After Leopardi
I’ve always loved this hermit hilland this green tangle obscuring my view
of so much of the farthest horizon.
When I sit and absorb the vast
spaces beyond me, the inhuman
silences, the profound calm
I pretend I imagine it all
and my heart’s almost brave.
Like wind rustling through trees
I’m the voice inside this infinitesilence recollecting the eternal
and the dead seasons and the present
and the living and their sounds until
thought is drowned by immensity
and I’m happy to shipwreck in that sea.
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Chart
Glide along rhumb line
From wind rose to landfall
As on an old portolan. Move
Straight to the white places
Or the engraved cartouche
That masks what the mapmaker
Could not know. Get there—
At all costs— get there!
On unrolled calfskin or
In golden sunlight. Arrive
At the destination you’ve chosen,
Past myriad namesInked on the vellum,
To hear the shout
Of the lookout as waves
Crest over the hard shore
You were born to discover.
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The River
Bark guard dog back;
whittle wind
down to bone. I’m home,
moon, I’m home.
Each leaf moves like a fish.
Follow them, follow.
Here is the forehead
of the dark. Here is torso;
here, thumb.
Tell me how far stars gowhen they go home.
We ride the river
until wind says, No.