80 Poems

@ at a rate of 4 ppm

Geof Huth
“Reading” at the Unaffiliated Reading Series
80 Poems
@ at a rate of 4 ppm

Geof Huth
“Reading”

(with NF Huth)

Unaffiliated Reading Series

Outpost 186
Cambridge
Massachusetts

10 April 2010
3 pm
80 Poems
@ a rate of 4 ppm

Geof Huth
“Reading”

Front cover illustration: “Waxwords 01”

Title page illustrations: “Waxwords 02, 03, and 04”
Back cover illustration: “Waxwords 05”

pdqb
875 Central Parkway
Schenectady, NY 12309 USA
geofhuth@gmail.com

dbqp: visualizing poetics

http://dbqp.blogspot.com

pdqb # 145
4 Pwoermds

tournicoquettish

absentaneity

demption

inuous
5 from Buckets of Rivers
from Tom Beckett

it is the root of me
the is find
hole thing
from the Indo-European
(hear) [fen(t)]
meaning
(I see) fight bog boundary

end
* and ending

conscienceness *
of desire
as praxis the subject
is the article
praxis upon which we
makes attend
prefect
sometimes
a ring referred to as
of starlings
around (t)he
the memory
what do you hear
* in a swallowed
syllable of her?
the profound
difference
between
a prayer
and
a prayer
10 from Being and Beckett
for Tom Beckett, poet

1
Changeless was the music he finally found.

2
Without knowing either language, he could recognize the subtle
differences between Finnish and Estonian.

3
Dying just before the text announced his death.

4
This compost, this life.

5
To understand a language is to understand how we think, how we
live, how we judge, how we feel.

6
From arbitrary signs, abstract representations of perceivable and
unverifiable fact.

7
The archival impulse to (merely) remain.

8
We are not the people who the people who stole us from ourselves
thought we were.

9
The word was “restorative,” not restorative.

10
This is note for your.
2 from beckettt 3 (working title)
to Tom Beckett

When else could you have expected to’ve done

What you imagined you had, except in the evening
As the swallows came home, pouring down the funnel of
Themselves into that gaping chimney, an abandoned
Mouth to the dead brown earth; except in the morning
When a sliver of sun first slipped through your open window,
First light then a gasp like waking or the wrench of apnea,
How you wake each night fifty times, once for each year you’ll
Die in your life, and then the sheet curled tightly around
Your neck to keep out your eye’s breath; except
In the afternoon when the river slid away, a caravan of water
Pushing everything down and everything out, and a single
Hawk glided on an upswing current until its eyes told it
To drop onto the bloody body of a rabbit nibbling; except
Whenever you were asleep, dropping down a shaft and
The grip you couldn’t make, pursued down a corridor to a
Corridor to a way not out, and the rope around your neck,
Or a tightening hand, as you almost made it around the corner,
And away into a marsh unnaturally warm with everything
Rotting within it and falling away, until you almost remembered
You didn’t live in a dream; except when you were awake?
Where had it been that it was that it had happened,
The last time you remember, I mean, when the water rose,
a bubbling
Flower, from the floor, or from the drain wedged among
A quartet of tiles, and the light growing within the bubbles until
The basement filled with water and sunlight, so much so that you
thought
Yourself swimming in glass, the world melting merely placidly,
And everything, and even you, unaware that something had gone
Wrong, because you were filled with the joy of floating,
A lightness like a windborne seed, disengaged from direction,
an armada
Of hat boxes bobbing with your head and opening
To reveal, emptiness, hatlessness, soggy crepe paper,
One stuffed rhinoceros, orange, and all these little black oceans
Round as a plate?
1 from beckettt 4 (working title)
towards Tom Beckett

It

To wonder the it

Still spreading out

Denotations

At a rapidly expanding speed

To wonder about it
And what it is

It rains
It seems
It feels like
It’s

The wonder of it
And ing

Parcel and passel

A mass and amast
Plunder and wonder

It waits

As we wait for it
As we must also wait

For it to mean
And make
And make a meaning of
Or out of
It is an expansion
Of our thought
About it itself

It is not there
It is always here

(Taps a finger
Against his head)

It is not there

For there is no it
That rains
Or snows
Or comes down
Otherwise
Out of the sky

We are surrounded
By nothing
Except everything

Which extends outward

From us
In waves of wavering

From each of us

In overlapping waves

And we are
The point at which

It starts
20 from atwhich

300. If in it it is it, it is. 312. whether to clamor or

301. dreamt (Dream
Mountain)
302. nest or nets
303. conceal, congeal
clamber, the “for” overcoming
the “over”
313. the car, the ear
314. car-shattering, ear-shatter-
ing

304. harbor (to keep, safe) and 315. d’mm’d

“or” [as opposed to, thumbing
(sp)] ‘harbour’ (ours, belonging 316. to hurtle and the hurdle
to, in keeping with, protector
of): silence, water 317. the queueue to the Q

305. a/grainst (the) 318. precision enginerring

306. litself 319. c-l-r-l-ss

307. upset, the(e) throe pillow

308. tepid fringes of the water

309. aeioulian hrps

310. the dimming room table

and the candle guttering out

311. the narrow sparrow holes in

the bluestone wall encompass
worlds
25 from all Klimt with violets

[Heare beginneth “all Klimt with violets,” a book of tiny electronic

poems w/ a title given by Ronald Johnson to Guy Davenport one
fine day]

@annahendrick shade and what frightens us within it, a tiny piece

of ourselves

@amycsc wrung and wrong, and the lighter sound of ringing in our
heads

@OliviaDresher prying the word out of the cracks in the floor, but
it slips away

@alienated vaguely wavy

@NickKristof the evidence of difference in the sweep of a hair off a

face

@nokturnoorg this is the beginning of night, this is the opening of

memory, this is the beauty of seeing

@drunken_boat O, loss and emptiness from loss, the grave view

from the hillside damp from afternoon rain

[joncone] my window is open and the train comes in, my window is

open and the rain comes in, my window is open and the pain comes
in

[joncone] it winds off the lake, fishing line, cloud trails, the sinuous
air itself

[joncone] one neon eon ago

[oed] Reflection of light, the light reflected, or supposed to be

reflected, the act of bending or turning the mind (back) upon a
subject
[other poets] the rules against want, the rules against now, the rules
against words, the rules against sound, the rules against this

[spontaneous song] I can’t see tomorrow, where is me

[ftbd] You are naturally egregious and self-important; you will exert
all your energies toward making them real.

@MargaretAtwood madly gardening, stuff and coming, thick cold

mud of spring, the barely yawn of warmth

[jon cone] these are your words and your joy, don’t bury them for
growing, spread them like weed

[spontaneous] just an oracle, truthsayer, naysayer, the briar and the

brayer

[spontaneous] I work in a factory of fiction, every day we create a

new world and sail away from our families towards it

[jon cone] cobble exists not for the benefit of stone, an improvised
life, the rough inconsistencies over time

[jon cone] marginalia: a panamanaman hat, an ararat cat, a hazard’s

sat

[jon cone] lust, the heart, and last but not lasting, final, and the
shape around which you might shape and hammer a life

[spintaneous] You are fat, yet tend towards bulimia, you have five
fingers in your left hand and you don’t know why.

[spontaneous] what mess of children lies ahead? what kind of place

is this?

@OliviaDresher the vale of shards where every word was born

@paulodtoledo unsteady, we writhe through it, leaving a trail

5 from This, Thine Earth: Selections from a Year

March 27

spection, nor
putable, and
here, now; today; not
this, thine earth

March 28

ceive yourselves!
able them
a wilderness of graves
wave wide

March 29

over the seemingly immeasurable

nificance

March 30

tain gladness
our forlorn hours
unto us desolate,
and lo!
brings out their fragrancy

March 31

—it may be the

—aye, even in that
—it may be the
—no
—even the comfort
man against every agony
5 from Waxwords

-1- -2-

-3- -3-

-4- -5-
2 from They are as You First Saw Them

Soliloquacious

At least I didn’t have the gall to become

a major poet | or to write those words
or to leave offerings to those | godlike
who came before me | or to wipe
their nacreous semen from the lipsticked
mouths | of those who did | or would
I accept | instead and only | these
few tiny kernels of pomegranate | unperfect
unread | the grantors of velleities
a timorous sweetness | ticklike reminders
that we are meat that sees | regurgitated
instances of insignificance | yet we still
speak and | in speaking | make our signs
in dwindling mothlight | as solemn offerings
to the idea of a silence we cannot shake
This embarrassment of wishes | the false
filthiness of emotions | all these faltering
disturbances of thought | keep me focused
on something besides nothing | which would be
the poet singing his verses | enthralled | & encased
Sunday Evening

The slightest shiver in the air from woodsmoke

leafsmoke | the oolongphaeic scent of burning
and lingering | what stays with us | on clothes
in hair | we keep | Remembering is the quaver
of the palest of blues | those colors that turn
obsidian at night | (a beautiful thing | call it
black) | Forgetting the end of dreaming | how
upon waking | that entire world fades into rain
This table before me seems stable | so, this floor
beneath my feet | and laid out in repeating para-
llels | We don’t exist as solids | or with them
We live in the mist of things | a braided system
of forgottens | decibel days leading to decimal nights
Everything whole reduces to fractions of itself
and the succumbing quiet | that spreads and stops
like ink | the page can hold only so many words
before it becomes another blank | black | the entirety
of nothing | We find our way at the end of each day
toward a vast evening sky | at the outskirts of an icy
infinity | well aware that there | there is becoming

+1 Poemsong

the shape of which will not be known until it becomes

p d

q b