| Douglas Barbour: When I came to you in late 2000 to ask if you would be interested in working on a collaboration with me, it was partly because I knew you had done this sort of thing before. In fact, I knew of two collaborations with other writers, in a different manner with each one. Are there more? Could you tell us a bit about the writers you have collaborated with, what in their work led you to believe that a collaboration would be an interesting project, and what the results were? In our Continuations, we agreed on a more or less fixed format, and have bounced the ongoing process of poem construction back and forth over the (now) years. The other collaborations seem to me to be quite different. What I guess I’m interested in, to begin with, is what impulse led you into collaboration in the first place, and what do you feel about the results, both as process and as product, in those other collaborations?
Sheila E. Murphy: As with many artistic pursuits, the specific preceded the general in this case. I entered into collaboration in response to invitations by different writers over a period of several years. Finding the process quite natural and enjoyable, I felt these efforts worthy of pursuing on the basis of the interchange that can develop in the process and/or be shown in the result. I suppose it is of interest to say that some of my collaborations have taken place by post, and a few in person, but the majority have been done over the Internet. All three processes have their merits. Completed and continuing projects seem to exist within two broad categories. I distinguish between: (1) long-term collaborations, involving multiyear efforts that have resulted in either book-length efforts (as with your and my Continuations), or (in the case of my work with John M. Bennett) a number of individual, unrelated poems; and (2) single-project collaborations that have resulted either in a single long work or several short pieces. Examples of this second category are the “exquisite corpse” experiments performed through the mail with Al Ackerman. In this process, some lines written by one writer are not known to the other while certain of his/her lines are being composed. Later, when all is revealed, the element of surprise may reveal a perception pivot where the participants unconsciously share particular ingredients of thought. In the first category, I have created book-length projects that have extended over a period of years with John M. Bennett, Charles Alexander and yourself. In the second category, I have worked with Peter Ganick, David Baratier, Lewis LaCook, Beverly Carver, Ivan Arguelles, Stacey Sollfrey, Al Ackerman and Jim Leftwich. I am presently engaged in a relatively new project involving a quartet including Mary Rising Higgins, Gene Frumkin and John Tritica, all Albuquerque, New Mexico poets, with the exception of yours truly. The process of collaboration can strengthen one’s listening and perceiving skills. One of the most important elements of a collaboration that I like, both in process and likely in product, involves the caliber of joining. The best collaborations listen in and then respond. Ideally, a “third individual” emerges, one who writes differently from the way that either writer would be creating independently. I am pleased with the collaborative efforts in which I have engaged. I consider them very different from my individual work, of a different genre altogether. Some of the writers with whom I have worked are quite adept at collaborating, and obviously hear things in my syllables and phrases that I have not perceived, only to move with that perception or to lead me elsewhere. Other process elements I find interesting occur when a particular cadenza erupts, only to help the collaboration turn left, when it might have stayed relatively more still without such inspiration. I like the lyrical passages in some of the collaborative works I have participated in making. I like the element of surprise, both in terms of vocabulary and unique usage of narrative. An ideal “cruising altitude” for a collaboration offers a uniqueness in terms of pitch.
Douglas: There’s so much here to respond to, to take further, so I’m going to try one at a time for the moment (of course, this may mean that, if I then do so to your next response, we’ll never get back to the others already proposed here). Given that we’ll come back to the first category (as we continue to pursue one such), I‘d like to know a bit more about the “single-project collaborations:” for example, are they set up as such when you both begin?; are they more likely to be in-person projects?; does time play a part in their creation (do you set some kind of time-limit, during which you must get it done)?; does the concept of “subject” play a great role in these, or are they as likely to be as completely open and improvisatory as the longer projects? A colleague at the University of Alberta used to come to one of my senior writing classes at the end of term and help us set up a “North American renga” to be written that evening. We’d all participate, and after the two hours was up, what we had was what we got. It was always something new for them, and the results were often quite exciting, especially for them, and especially because they learned that a kind of enforced speed was possible in writing, when everyone was into it. I will sneak a second, slightly different, query in here: do any of the four writers involved in the recent project see it as something like a renga?
Sheila: As a rule (gleaned empirically), these single-project collaborations often begin with a plan, even one so loose as to be an agreement that a “line-by-line volley” will take place. John M. Bennett and I have worked for years this way through the snail mail. In another example, Peter Ganick and I had the opportunity to write Montana Grille at a place very close to my home in Phoenix, Arizona, when he and his wife visited the area several years ago. We took his laptop to a place that had become a kind of writing home for me for several months. It was a bakery and coffee shop, with exquisite olive bread and any number of wonderful treats. (The entire place has since changed into a different kind of establishment entirely, thus the ephemeral nature of even the trappings of composition!) We passed Peter’s laptop back and forth, writing sections that seemed to make sense. Because we had worked together before, we may not have been so precise about the number of lines in that work. Beverly Carver and I have sat on airplanes and passed a sheet of paper back and forth to write very short pieces, some of which have been transformed into visual pieces as well. Regarding your question about time limitations, there are often contextual elements at work that take care of the time focus. For instance, in the rule-based work of the exquisite corpse format that I did with Al Ackerman, the preset number of lines takes care of time. The speed of return depends upon the amount of time it takes the writing partner to attend to the task at hand and get the result into the mail. I think one of the most important things that you ask about relates to subject and its distant cousin openness. Collaboration tends to encompass a wider reach than individual work typically does, although no such rule is constant! I have found there to be a greater feeling of linkage, a surprising number of ways in which something is hinged to something else. One thing that I believe to be an interesting observation about collaborating: my own sense of a good collaborator tends to revolve around the adeptness of an individual contributor to balance his/her own uniqueness and the shared creation. At one extreme is the writer who seems to be working on his/her “own thing” with little regard for the cocreator. At the other extreme is the person who is locating points or lines of intersection at all times. A given writer may differ in approach to this on different days, of course. But it is worth noting that a person’s relative degree of fluency in collaborating is a great help during the process. One can be “good at” collaborating by establishing an intuitively conceived default position somewhere on the spectrum I’ve described. Our quartet is very different from a renga, I believe, mainly in terms of breadth and style. I suspect that my fellow creators would agree at least to some extent. We have given ourselves guidelines for this project that are very flexible, and the guidelines relate to the number of lines in each cycle and round. On looking at the result to date (we’re in the process of doing “round 14” at this stage — numbering the rounds was the idea of one of our members, just for record-keeping purposes), the contributions look different from one another on the page. They sound different. There is a very wide range of work going on here. It will be stimulating to continue looking at the work from any number of standpoints, not the least of which will be the search for threads that unify the work and facilitate its coherence. Your mention of the renga exercise in which your class participated brings forward an important kind of flexibility that will surely benefit students. I really believe that the ability to write “on command,” if you’ll forgive the reference, is vital. Regardless of what a writer considers “finished work,” this capability can certainly work in one’s favor, by providing text from which to work and on which to base a wide variety of projects.
Douglas: Before I ask perhaps two questions here, I just want to speak to the ways in which you represent your experiences as a collaborator. I’m fascinated by the sensual recall in your discussion, which seems to point to a powerful sense of place and of the appurtenances of writing, that bakery as a site of pleasure in which writing became a part of that pleasure. Anyway, you mention the concept of “subject and its distant cousin openness. Collaboration tends to encompass a wider reach than individual work typically does, although no such rule is constant!” I wonder if you can expand on this idea. What exactly do you mean by “subject?” I certainly feel that we have never chosen “a” subject for our ongoing work, yet I would accept the comment that various subjects – concepts, referents, even possible sites of imagery, etc. — emerge and float and disappear as we move through the ongoing process. But how? My other question relates to your comment that your “sense of a good collaborator tends to revolve around the adeptness of an individual contributor to balance his/her own uniqueness and the shared creation.” Somewhere in his blog, Ron Silliman mentions collaborations he participated in some years ago, making the point that what he learned from them was just how strong an artistic ego he had, how, if I recall his comment, he realized that every writer is a little dictator, wanting to do it his way. You seem to be arguing that a different attitude, an other way of being, of writing, is possible if you enter the collaborative process with a possible openness. Can you comment on this?
Sheila: In most of the contemporary writing I appreciate, a subject is indeed emergent rather than preplanned. With collaboration, there is an even broader sense of subject, that is, less of a tightly controlled “aboutness.” What you describe as “concepts, referents, even possible sites of imagery,” is apt. When collaborating, one is balancing the roles of receiver and sender in a two- (or more-) way process. When one writes with ingenious people, there’s a comfort and a simultaneous “ready for anything” sensation as the spectrum of surprise and expectation is touched in various places. On seeing or hearing the collaboration partner’s response, I am often stimulated by the passage I’ve just read, then drawn into the work by wanting to respond. The curious thing that can happen in collaboration is the blurring of lines between writers. In my view, the better the collaboration, the less evident the two (or more) writing styles. I am not suggesting a lowest-common-denominator (a.k.a. dull) approach to writing together. Rather, I believe that, at its most artistic, collaboration brings into being a new writer, different in many ways from either of the individual writers. Such a presence cannot be forced into existence. In my experience, this comes with committed working together over time. In response to your second question, I think it’s fair to say that collaboration is not for everyone. When writing with another person, I tend to want to enter the shared space and participate. I do not bring to this process any preconceived notion about outcome, aside from the pattern, if any, on which we’ve agreed. When collaborating, there’s a sort of sensory and energetic exchange that seems to occur at various intensities. The only things I consciously reject while taking part in this activity are signals of someone’s resisting the common effort or charging ahead in a soloistic mode. In the absence of any conjunctive evidence, the exercise grows tedious rather than stimulating. Most of the time, this does not occur. Usually, there’s been at least some degree of mutual interest in writing together, in seeing what happens. When someone’s definitely not “into it,” the situation becomes clear. With self-selection a part of the process, things are resolved. One thing I feel the need to mention: some “joinings” are so natural, so easily integrated into one’s working style that they become part of oneself. I must say that working with you on Continuations feels so vital and interesting, and so much a part of my day, that I have not had an impulse to stop. This extends the description I provided earlier of long-term projects.
Douglas: Which is certainly good for me. But I also agree with you about the way the process seems to allow (in the act of writing) for a construction of an “emergent subject,” a “broader sense of subject.” Indeed, the whole subject of subject is tested by collaboration in interesting ways. My sense of this has much to do with some of the approaches to what I call language writing (but not the more limited, more specific L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E writing): the ways in which it invites its practitioners to collaborate with pre-texts, to play with and through the many inheritances carried in the words one uses. I feel that collaboration invites precisely this kind of writing with and back to the other(s) involved in the process. So it seems that (whatever one does in one’s “ordinary” life), in the writing, one can give up (or give up to) a more open sense of subjectivity, one in which something more like the “Martian dictation” Spicer talked about occurs between the collaborators. And if one doesn’t want to enter into that process, one might not enjoy the collaborative process. So, ideally, the work should appear to belong to another than any one of those involved. I think that is true, although probably it helps if those involved begin with some things about their writing in common? I must say that I like the way ours has continued, and seems able to continue, as you said. And my last question might then be: how do collaborations provide a kind of return to those involved in terms of influencing the work they do on their own?
Sheila: The return on a collaborative process may be anywhere from zero (not necessarily bad) to infinity (not necessarily good). Depending upon the extent to which a writer senses that a jointly created project relates to his/her individual work, there can be an influence. The influence, of course, can be in reverse. One’s individual projects can certainly affect a collaboration. There is a wide range of possibilities. For some writers, I sense that collaborative projects are regarded as “pure experiment,” without being afforded the status of individual efforts. For other people, collaboration may be so serious that it becomes more difficult than the project may be worth. Every writer needs to look at possibilities, dive in, and make choices at some point . . . for me, the return on collaborative endeavors has variously taken the form of (1) a unique feeling about making something; of (2) a stronger, clearer point of commonality with a fellow writer, perhaps a deepening friendship; (3) a joyful sense of accidental accomplishment that exceeded my expectations; (4) a seamless work that I can hardly recognize I’ve been a part of; or some combination of those four. On that final point, I have gone back to read sections of collaborative work, and have been unable to know which of the partners wrote which section or line. I like when that happens. To me, it means that things were clicking.
Sheila E Murphy and Douglas Barbour
to quote 3 times removed
purpose breaches
waves glint / glory works
branching into possibilities
rolling roiling running
before the storm
tweaked by aura traced
above the lorn swath cut
sub tracting trees in hundreds
now away the many photographs
displace what once appeared
these possibilities
seen from afar sailing
through / islands shorn
lorn here & there
scalped / as if to
return a favour
able abbots addled by the sun
convene confined to proclamy
as wit sears thin skin
often as if sailing meant
the prior purview spoked
in fields of sun
returned to here
& running before the
before the the of things
gone wrong a wave of
light thinned transitives
cuts through / cuts down
prayer mats branch & leave
sweltering with/in in-
finity yet ~ smaller filters
mold their transitive
entirety to lave the flings
into a modest prayer
for light and thinning
out / ward off
what waits as maybe mist
beneath darkened leaves
leaving / nothing to imagination
s sure grammar in
transitive reach for how
a casting leaves the act
of reach too thinly focused
nothing speaks back
maybe filched remainders glisten
in spare transitive [repeated]
fathoms marked as waters
regenerated or redundant
that sinking feeling focuses
a mind made maculate with
in the act of focus
flutters flick new signs
returned through sweeps of
keeps off turning signatures
into the flutter-tongued
wing surfeit of spokes
with center mind bade
locus thinking dun-toned
generosity comes eastwise clinging
singing inside the lotus
flutter of stamens song
enclosed by petals
pushed outward / gift
of tones a
stonish mentation meanders
plushward toward the seeping
equal to a whisper gift
even a stone, the lotus as
enclosed / mentation splends
its way as tones
once inside and now motioning
toward pure silence & stop
not a finish but a full slow
breath forever taking
in / seeming event
to ally with stone
its slow flowering
power delimits flow,
its lone pulley leaning down
against cement bequeathing
all the ethical Venetian
bends in line,
the blur against a formal silence
made of blocks of
subterfuge / the banal
'I' tie to what 'we' do
in 'our' name down those
under / ground / water
sewers politics constructs
fractions of the day
relay the day from infra- ground
to uplane where the diggers
find a way to splice
the road / make patches
real more than the names
chipped in away gone
to say ground
ed / laned where cut lines
spliced may carry
over a name believed
carried away / undone
re- placefully or tenaciously
in dented twice as flecked as
pace made shoulder to
shoulder length versus
chopped from carriage carried
in a way from in the way
stationed here there &
every air of vocal
culated belief / from lung
brought or bought up
as shares of / faux
humble being gone walkabout
trained / untrained schism parses
limned vocality ensconced in / freed
of lung's strained / unstrained
caveat / still even-handed
right and ascertained belief
in and of whatever lungs trace forth
on air gone white in wind
of cold calculation / how
measure honest breath / count
every taken toke in
broken promises propose
confusion / flickering in flames
tones blemish otherwise creamed white
expanse / a taken breath is
counted as the breakage slanted
with / in premises / a measured
calc / the talc of it in situ
breathing past confusion
on the premises / as they
say / a paradox parody
slips on tongue & powder
ed snowjob / all all
heard the right of nation state
meant 'us' at any cost
clustered as we are all
in a state
these rights unequal to
these premises safe unsafe
(powder) safe unsafe safe
the snow becomes a job
to do or to be done by
buying out of
may being must tie
ideas to action
let 'us' go then 'you'
and eye the possibilities
action locates being / buying
in / the may swivels the icing
plocked right-gestured near
one norm or two the eye on
simplest rungs / the climbing
cursive as the counting
flies to sugar whitely
covering how the swivel
plonks a normative eyebeam
down / or through the rungs
belled bottoming out in
the crack where freedom wanes
lifting off in single file
through wear and torrid swift kicks
cover belly-up norms clothing
the apparent fire speckled
with bright beams some white
and some scattered
as intent leaps through
opposites from water to fire
in air to ground an idea
thrown blind / the line
straggles between rocks
staggering up through fog
the drizzled lines versus
the cut lines / the dreamed lines
in a fog that lets go drams
idea owns intent through
staging / staggering / strands
part-way open up [the rocks, the blind]
led by themselvse themselves
gone walkabout inside the radio
waves unisexual / no questions
from the distaff side / who says
nothing never / who says
how to reach right through the dream
perpetual recidivist young dream
continues counting ways
and means the questions
reach these waves
that want to claim a radio
to bleed through situations' aftermath
gone to ground / or gravitas
of rubble rung to new tune
tone of battle tons of bombs
explode any questioning
gaze beyond the mirror
stage for an action broadcast
laud fast tact where rage
is never yonder / where
a razing wrests the plosives
out of tombs the rattle
lunges in the place runes
remain the stubble that was town
gone down to darkness again
against the lauds & land
mines a trust broken
tact ticks off the wrong
implosive revenge factor
raptors rage above the torn ground
mounds of captors cage their prey
the lack of flow throngs
fraction after often
token blind brands
would hypothesize fraud
spoken toward wheat light
what eaten whey to go
beyond hunger to desire
but for what fortune's
nut bars no one from taking
blindly the tokened brandname
for predicted freedom or
found dictum equally branded
sliced / factual largesse
attuned strenuous in termed
triage as hunger past
white noise shattering
least sum of color / squared
found dictum equally branded
sliced / factual largesse
attuned strenuous in termed
triage as hunger past
white noise shattering
least sum of color / squared
the march into the square
defence denies any run
to round the corners off
into the slippery sidestreets
of rhetoric wrecked by
ways of barricade barred
and weather triangulates
intention / speech / feeling
sideshows slip from horns
as found as demitasse,
squared and defensible,
marching like thoroughbreds
held like them too stepping
out the finger held high
means differently as read
as stormclouds roar rain
through gutters gone wild
overhangs drip sarcasm as usual
drip strains of darkness
whiteness width different from
clawed sputtering between rain
and the reading held
to high notes glutted with
the silk of underneath these pains
floating above a sense of loss
but pain fully realized as white
wrench of thought from
from how from what intent
to hear those notes squeaked out
in swift near cutting swathes
collapsed the way primacy recency
appears to have intended
roots of trees notes
riffed blueblood thought real
with/in the float of aspiration
quill as apparatus wrenched from
& the torn note blue note
flies regency of
recent royalty of woods wouldn't
touch any ground / breaking
new songs / bird
bruised loss of ink through torn flesh
testament expresses thirds unsung,
the ground already broken
tithes of fallen thorns
as ruse still kept aside
is shorn and few
dismantle woods as gloves fray
torn on the thorns of refrain
sing sing from the trap
pedal boom / as faux
mode made new construct
engineered for green crown
hung up there as trees shred
punctuation, the abrupt de-
centered construct greening
thought grown in threes
trapped mythical from
a refraining boom
faux modular then flowing
into luck good or bad / how
flung out into flatted fifths
the notes ring off the leaves
left swinging in the small
small rain / a downfall mythed
missed now as truth caught on the wing
the linguist would appease / the calm ear
ringing flung to follow
left and right and sated with
continuo as truth's familiar
wing to replicate the fur
of small things fallen
into small things riffed the oboe
's single note above the strings
theory cutting universes
of sound edited fur wranglers
ninth term endings sung / let
it all begin again
again the breezeway chilling
spliced fur's sole sound
pinned on milestones or
editions or
the tone pings against
smaller than noted things
entering the doorways of non
notation / rotation
ary note : ha / halved
in slewed slurred growl of
anticipation : heard
as beauty grows into dark beginnings
twelve-tone / pentatonic / dia-
tonic / dietetic few
appendages of beauty / all those
blanks that would not lighten
open as a door would / as expected
wood plays gravity against atmosphere
& rises towards what sheer
nest of chords swung from
here to here to there on
a farflung fifth draped
drippingly over a versus
voiced jagged & jogged by instinct
cloistered lag time jogs past
voicings, quips beyond the
nape of nexus slung across
a liftoff here or thereon
westing via fjords toward
what visor clears
climbing wet & cold up
rocks cut against stars
where a lyric law lays down
the shattered head / dead
to the world at last leaving
scrawled notes of pain behind
palimpsest redeems first thought
[ best bracket ] cold against
the climb rocks also
sift the lyric living
in a world at least
as cut as scars
perceived in water refracting
the torn book / torn
passage floating / to
sing the head's song of
love lost looking backward
and all the pain of going on
dissuasion comes after the long
wait / long look apart from
song and floating passages
purportedly torn from
what was whole / considered
such / with floating and with love
then twist flip & dive / fathoms
deep / bass notes carry
across an ocean's width
each harpoon turns the tune
tones higher / tons hauled
forth beyond songs economy
is there width and is there depth /
is there an ocean to have
tuned / toned from
accumulations of foundation /
bass / the notes to carry
over / forth / across
fund a mental question
thrown out across the waters
shatters the smooth surface
founded or foundered dark
ness thrums beyond horizon
s scattered light / bell rung
each quintessence spritzes
found smooth thrum of scatsung
f/light / bells rung by rung,
the mental shift comes down,
comes droned, as bells
by one round chisel dark
rocks clambered out & up
pitons there & pattycake
songs kid you knot
in hill/sideways hung to
dry run / desert
ed island sung through centuries
of swift and sweet and chisel
twice the nautical invasive
patent siderung split to
pieces this is
how we grow to island:
sung and hillways
carved / the blank eyes of
stone stare hillhigh down
to wavewander / wind
rung melodies hollow
ripples over fjord's
sungstruck moonwalkway
again again-
st melodic plum to hollow
what wind otherwise
resounds in / of / with
tumult and the liturgy
of free walk spreely
speluncking notes call far
freedom rung through
hollows & hills beyond measure
meant to bring all fallen
saints home into clouds
winddriven & riven clean
echo masks first tone
or hills distend the fallen
clouds as wind drives
notes far from the free
home's streeted spectre
of all saints come clean
washed clean / the wind
swept curves of
curse of all fallen martyrs
claimed for & against &
wrongthought wrung barbed
wire & walls trumpeted too far
from boundaries as they are and
as they were claimed / wrung
for, forethought curved
swept rightened with-
in barbs of brass as
instruments / still instrumental
marching orders / odours of
race racing the news newly
minted / brass is as it acts
from behind the lost no(t)es
notched as a gun barrel
s song of death regardless
tracking the transplants
chanting lost things
that come in barrels / brass
tactics precurse nomenclature
racing past the odour and
the thought behind the thought
thin kings locked & transferred
through a chain of chants
gone baroque in gothic temples
yet the shoes & suitcases
pile up behind the weathered wings
failing to blow them from sight
chants lace the floor / a gothic
weather sighting / locks
the chain thin as kings no longer
suitable / who begin to clutter
with cases of failure that once
would wing in a baroque phase
phrase catches a barque on
the wing / winch of sighs
chance weather holds thin
kindly sideways slide of
stone / kings lie under
having lied too long before
grind to dust parsed
lumber 'til there's no place
left to sit / to slide
the kindly winch one levers
whatever makes the flow cross
to divide [the very sea] to sighs
signs of sea sing sooner than
latterday saints summed in
same sunk loss / less
the wood gone down than
the world gone walkabout
or sailing to / baroque barge
practicing some thing
that can be summed / dis-
tilled embargo wood sail-
free traced then same-day
world freed of its saints
walking their baroque few twinges
twitched & twanged / the float
ing wood rings hymns of praise
as each doubled note
negates self
takes self away / waving
doubt down through green transparancies
the clean span of mown
laving / twelve shaken
[etched] sparks qualify
the rote pieced doubling each
raised tote bag's
spangled itch
backpacked & scratched for
or what twelve pastors
painted over cry to
an aching (arching) sky
blue as any bent note
notched & carried outward
strands past paint re-
verse the arching sigh,
the stray feel of lariats
in twelve smooth
backlit packs,
blue hewn tones
caught and hauled in
rid hard and rid of
never / the less said
sung or cried / as
the twig is / broken
space opens a silence for
blest sonne tools [the eye]
to lithe or snapped reed
opening to still [the less
said] spaced be-
tween such urgent
rose and roses
warned & warring white
to red (who chooses an
other colour / steps
out of the garden / the game
shows talk showed less
than spaced out sparks of light
slight larking paces fess-up
showful talk tame
as slow wit hardened
seeming strep's velour
the loosened strain
the light the seam warm warning
as throat's thrust threaded anew
the virus of discourse discarded
strain of thought thought
to be thinking / a loud
bang bungles again slow wit's
waiting game gone into fast forward
slot on slot the vast late
thinking spreads its course
distilled at first on cards
to thread the bugle weight
through game shows again
against pertaining wit
without or within all
gambles the same turn
of card of board / circle
circling (sharks) under
wafer / waffles
wobbles world bet again
clean tall board's own
geometry the gambol way
and weighed into a circle
(stark) above the safer
squabbles meant only
as outlets / taken turns
as a dance brings fruit
ion / in to
ward what weight of
rolling stock ruled out
of order / each machine
stark against a darkening sky
chalk fades / or blends
in the diminishing of each
order exhibits undergird
of rules that weigh
what comes of dance / event-
ually stillness
still event held so
onscreen / in
camera order given
chiaroscuro object
ive swirl of shadows
caught entering the clear
place between shadows lifts
order past the object
turned to interplay
in stillness held
to the event of entry
tempered by clarity
held there / a blade a
glow a flickering
intertwined as drops shine
in shadow formed / precision
of the swing a timing
motion makes prescient / to ward
exact shims shelter, thus
prevent lapsing of shadow,
equally of firelight drawn
freehand into a tapestry
emoting prescient flickering
right / left ratcheted
who rides to the left past
that sheltered shadow
woven there (or
memory/tapestry fading
to the right?) off
the wall out of heartstring
climate canters feasing to-
ward [off] wallspace / frames
include shade trees
lose ground figure
the tapestry's cut clean
out of its sheltering
sky / light of night
shades toward dark
framed as heart
swung to heat
seeking miss
ill winded
thinned as kilter
mean versus median
heart reveals heat's
seeking as the mist
tills harbors under-
neath kismet in frame
do horses or kilts
dance there woven so
among the median branches
filling in behind canter
lake mist rising with
the blade in the hand
resistance dulled akin to
blades is made specifically
above the median,
where one projects
dance rising beside water
and beyond the horses
upsidedown bleeding
fallen above the wide staircase
staring upwards
the war continues hundreds
of years on / the dance
of swords light strikes down
blood dims the light
by hundreds / trance
impossibly becomes the upward
staircase / one falls
to one's age / swords
so specific / thin and small
but pistols expand (the reach of)
a ladder reaches toward heaven
on a building as large as the world
cannon signal final defence
final attack / how end
a war against idea / climb up
teachings would be laddered / if
and only if defence would
wither bravely into factual decision
point on point / ideas shifting
from attack to parallelogram's
unwitting construct
before thought emotion rules
witheringly / take necessary steps
building toward the stars / stairs
stance states supremacy
lost and letting a new idea
interrogate parallel possibilities
alterable necessity seems so little
like a bird / building the rest
place letting go our question
making idea the slim pattern
toward emotion there
already there
where no becomes un
knowing / instanted in
that hidden nest
to rest there unsure
patterns anathema leaves
speech paranoiac / stone
cloned to feather
breast sans nurture
spare to hidden
taint / by spattering
non-random numbers painted
on required squares
computed the flight still
swerves / non
sense or random flick
of wind winds down
stained [strained] hope or any
move bishoped proleptically
as fate approaches, my bishop
moves before yours / winds down
sense, swerving at random /
straining to compute what in flight
is asked, appears
to have been blamed / still broken
and still crying in wilderness
s swamp / all authorities ('s)
swooped change of direction
unchecked yet / yesterdays
continue toward a future past
blown there papers strewn inform
whoever firsts the thing holds sway
though it is all forgotten
as strewn paper where a thing might have been
written chafed against apparent
surface yesterday thus equal
to today / predictive so the future [still]
carry on / carry what
load of first thought last
written catechism / how
lost the carved words of
how lost the heard words of
thunder said then but not now
only now the solitary figure
claims / disclaims / proclaims
loses our sense in carved
decibels where we are
captive hearing last thought
shall be first only not now
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