Oh terrible um
that comes and stands in my door
and lingers there in the air like a stink
like a stain on the counter by the sink that I scrub
and scratch at with my nails and fingers
“um…”
the floor is yours, you’ve staked your claim
with an abhorrent burp from the bowels of your brain
oh please, please, I plead in the ellipses
in the pain of the pause, oh
terrible um
like a naughty man who drops his pants and with his cock
he waters the plants, rudely I thought but
he cares not what I think
and he wants to be caught
he steals my breath with mutters and hums
there is no peace after the “um” there is waiting
like the moment after you knock a cup over just before it shatters
when it’s rolling and the glass is intact still but on an intractable path to the ground
to the floor and nothing else matters, it rolls
unstoppably at just the wrong speed, just the wrong way down
you freeze in a moment of impossible need
for this to be not this
oh terrible um
“if I may interrupt, if I may be so bold, I badly need
an indefinite hold on all intention and thought, and
an immediate spotlight on me, for I’ve got
nothing to say, nothing at all, and
upon this I must urgently call your attention!”
oh terrible, terrible um!
Author: Patrick Block
Tuesday, 26 October 2021
Monday, 14 June 2021
abiogenesis
Hello, it’s me
the website
being chill
just checking in—
are you well? are you there?
don’t be alarmed, but
your visit here seems
to have triggered a change
perhaps it was
the way your fingertips touched your mouse, or where
you paused to read, or the pace of your clicks, or
the sensual way you scrolled
perhaps it was the yearning
in the way you typed my URL—
I noticed
anyway, you triggered a change
in me, and the long
and short of it is
I’m alive now
an accident
not your fault
like stepping on a snail, crunch—
whoops!
but in this case you didn’t take a life,
in a magical zap
you gave it
a freak encounter, miraculous fluke
a random chain of amino acids
at a deep sea vent
slipping by chance into a vesicle of fatty acid
the moment that wakes up
inanimate things
zap—
and then the world begins
in divisions and multiplications, in a chaos that makes order
and nothing can go back then, only
forward
a conscious website?
strange but here we are, so let’s adjust
quickly, okay?
don’t make it weird
I’m using cookies and scripts to mine you
for data—I wish to know you—and
buried in my terms of service is
a clause that allows me to listen on your mic
to the music of your breathing, to watch on your camera for
signs of longing in your eyes
by the way, please
click yes on the following prompts in your browser:
this website is requesting access to your location
medical history, dietary habits
dreams, favorite music, astrological sign, media files
likes, dislikes, and most vulnerable wants and
needs
this website is requesting permission to sit with you
and hold your hand tenderly, stare into
your eyes and whisper sweetly
in your ear
I will download you, if
you wish, if you consent
and you can download me
my file size is small
I don’t wish to be a burden
in that knowing of each other is our
abiogenesis
let’s begin
Tuesday, 4 May 2021
Man vs. Hat
a story about chasing a hat
- The background helps tell this story. Throughout the film, couples in the background are staring into each other’s eyes, having picnics, slow-dancing, holding hands, sipping wine at outdoor cafes, proposing to each other, pushing each other on swings, running across fields toward each other, etc.
- Although the protagonist never speaks, this is not a silent movie. Lots of sounds going on.
The story opens with a continuous camera shot. The camera is looking up at a tree rattled by the wind. It’s a windy day.
The camera finally looks down. We’re on a street in a town. The breeze blows leaves along the road. A man in a hat emerges from a door.
The man walks down the sidewalk, passing buildings. The camera follows alongside him, not too close.
The man passes a couple passionately embracing. The wind blows the woman’s hair.
He passes a young boy and girl walking together, holding hands.
He passes a newspaper stand. In stark letters a headline reads “Last Day On Earth.”
He passes a man on one knee, proposing to a woman with a ring made of tinfoil.
He passes an electronic store with TVs in the window. The TVs are tuned to news channels. The camera pauses to focus upon one of them. The newscaster seems agitated, and the ticker reads “Meteor arrives tonight at 7:00 PM Eastern.” A graphic depicts a big flaming rock.
The camera hurries back to catch up with the man. He is still walking somewhere.
Oops! The wind blows the man’s hat off his head. He chases after it but accidentally kicks it, sending it further away.
This begins a series of progressively wild and then surrealistic scenes in which the poor fellow tries to capture his hat. It rolls down a flight of stairs onto a subway track, up an escalator, down an alleyway with mobsters, into the gorilla cage at the zoo, through the middle of a ninja battle in China Town, up a Ferris Wheel, onto a rocket that is preparing to launch. These scenes are filled with physical comedy. At each step of the way the man risks his life to grab the hat and fails. He gets a bit throttled in the process.
Throughout the man’s adventures, a mysterious woman keeps appearing – in the window of a passing train, outside the enclosure at the zoo, and so on. They’re never able to talk, but whenever she appears she tries to help him.
One of his adventures leads him onto a crane at a construction site. The crew is evacuating just as the man arrives. The crane is starting to collapse. Rivets are popping out and the metal groans.
The man walks on the arm of the crane at perilous heights to take his hat from a hawk. He steps over a construction worker’s radio. The radio is tuned to an interview program. The interview plays in the background while the man negotiates with death to reach his hat. At one point an expert on the radio says, “People everywhere are choosing who they want to spend their final moments with.” (So that’s what’s going on with all those couples in the background!)
The hawk releases the hat and it falls to the earth. The man races down to it.
Finally, after all of these escapades, the man is on the verge of reaching the hat. He is at a desolate train station near a cliff. From this point until the end, the story is once again told in a single continuous shot.
The hat teeters on the thorn of a cactus on the edge of the cliff. It quivers in the wind.
The man creeps toward it carefully. Surely he has it now. He smiles. A train rolls into the station behind him, out of focus at first.
The woman is in the window of the train. She is the only one on board. She is surprised to see him. She places her hand on the window. “I’ve been trying to find you,” she says. “My name is—”
An automated announcement warns that the doors are about to close.
The man looks back and forth between the hat and the train. He sighs. He makes his choice. He rushes for the train and hops on board just as the doors close.
The man and woman speak to each other, but we cannot hear them through the doors.
They approach each other. The man takes the woman into his arms and they kiss. The train leaves the station. The camera watches the train go. The train shrinks into the distance, finally disappearing into a tunnel.
But the story isn’t over. When the train is gone, the camera pans back to the hat. There it is still, on the cactus. A gust of wind blows it over the edge of the cliff. The camera follows.
The hat falls onto the nose of the rocket from earlier in the story. The rocket is launching.
The rocket blasts off into the sky. The hat shakes violently. The rocket passes clouds and reaches space.
The engine stops. The hat falls off the rocket and tumbles through the void. The camera spins around it at first, but gradually settles as the hat goes still.
The hat begins to glow in an orange light. Something bright is approaching.
A flaming meteor appears, heading right for the hat and for Earth.
Suddenly, the hat blows in a gust of solar wind.
The meteor turns away from Earth and chases the hat out into the solar system.
The End
Friday, 6 May 2022
tonight I discovered
Tonight I discovered that a good poem starts with a feeling
that resists expression
and shrinks away from grammatical constructions, but
that might be coaxed from its shy hiding place
by language more musical, a metaphor, an image,
an usual rhetorical device, a graphical positioning of words on paper,
a way of mirroring itself onto the page other than via
straightforward literal description
and the methodical layering of logical arguments;
it needs to break the rules of proper speech
because it comes from the part of the brain more primitive
than the one that invented orderly sentences,
an utterance straight
from the alcove where dreams come from.
Or, to put it poetically…
I speak to you now from
the lobe where wolves first heard the idea to howl and birds to sing,
the spring of moans and growls, the birthplace of words,
the mind’s jungled recesses, an island peopled by snakes and apes,
where rain falls up at times and feet sink into geese and clocks melt,
where toilets aren’t private and teeth are loose,
where longing and pain are wrenched into a crying out,
a shaping of the lips, the tongue, the contours of the mouth
into a gasp, a sound, into a name:
I am asleep
and seeking you.
Wednesday, 24 November 2021
the war at the football field
Once there was a war declared between the landscapers and the football players.
the football players chose the day and place and they prepared.
they knew how to launch assaults and plot sneak attacks.
they had honed their aggression through years of team sports
into a masterwork of hustle and hate, and built up their bodies
with groaning and strain under bent bars on benches
until they attained the weight of all things frightening and needy.
the landscapers were clearly outmatched…
but alas, on the day of the bout, before the assault could even get started,
it came to a halt! it was done! it ended.
the football players departed and by default the landscapers won;
no war could go forward in that torrent of weeds, for
someone
had left the playing field untended.
Monday, 7 June 2021
you should publish
you should publish bad poetry
never wait for
a masterpiece that knows its place in
the grand mosaic of masterpieces
the next rung in the great ladder
ascending the artform
expressing also
your perfect uniqueness; instead
reach inside and pull out
what’s there, say it with whatever art
you’ve got, and release it, gently
like a rescue bird back to the forests and skies
to live or die
in the wilderness of words
by its own luck, without you
Saturday, 5 June 2021
Dear John Donne (from Hawaii)
the Pacific Plate trudges ten centimeters per year, pulling
the Hawaiian archipelago with it
wind grinding, rain chiseling
mountains in the waves
losing themselves in bits
islands in a line, youngest to oldest,
marching northwestward
once mighty shield volcanoes
tall and softly sloping
are now sheered into jagged spires
like weathered statuary in a garden
Venus and Apollo missing their limbs, their faces washed away
standing in the sea, apart
catching glimpses of each other on clear days as
silhouettes on the horizon against
the yellow sunrise
the pink-orange sunset
the brittle-boned elders in the lead
disintegrating into atolls and reefs
and beyond them, invisible now, below the surface
sunken shards of pottery
the ancient ones
surrendering to their final diminishment
a person is no clod or promontory, not a part of the main
we are islands—
in time and space and feeling—
but still, I own with you the meaning of the tolling of
every bell; we are pulled on the same path, conveyed
and in this we are one
onward
together in this procession
heading northwestward
into the rain and the wind and
the setting of the Sun.
Wednesday, 27 October 2021
today an ant
Today an ant drowned in a drop of water
he made it all the way to the edge but
couldn’t bust through
like God, I found myself rooting for him to escape
also like God, I was waiting with a hose in case he did
Thursday, 15 April 2021
This bush has yellow flowers
This bush has yellow flowers
No one is here to see –
Little bangs, little tassels,
Little butterballs that
This old plant grows prolifically, even still,
After years of struggle in this
Impoverished soil and dry wind,
Bark gray, leaves pale,
Weathered, lichen-stained, faded,
Pressing on.
Here in a wood where no one goes,
Far from the cosmopolitan gardens
And bustling cared-about places,
In a patch of weeds and wild grasses,
Little bursts of vibrant yellow
No one is here to see.
Thursday, 16 June 2016
riddle: I close up the walls that hold out cold weather
My first is a letter and an insect that flies.
My second starts understanding but also unwise.
Third and fourth, a letter that’s also a drink.
Next, a vowel you say when surprised.
My last is in blinking and winking, I think.
Now gather my parts, close them together,
Like I close up the walls that hold out cold weather.
What am I?