A NOTE on form
BY JOS CHARLES
Do not die, they say,
at least today—filled with sense—
the pocket of city-planted shrubs
lining the street—like a mind, not built,
they say, but given Concrete, the road,
the paint bucket in the arm of a man
spilling dashed-lines to a road It is sense
he makes & the ash from hills (these
too are desert hills) spill to the road
where we do not speak of poetry—a bridge
built to burn itself, not unlike a mind
What would open fire mean, having opened
every fire, boundless open every lung, & stoking
fire I do not know what else there is, at times,
narrative, material split from raw material,
or preserving the split only to talk on
a mezzanine later of men, the wood
we live & place ourselves to under
a star of branch & wire
the unsayable possible
in line to say, this
was our desire
A NOTE on form
BY JOS CHARLES
Never having lived
among things, but beside
forms of things, I no longer
look where the city lifts a little
further, past houses, oceans,
light from a crane, breathing,
no longer looking the child
hurried beside a mother moving
too, too fast at what escapes
the grasp of leaves & awnings
of leaves, past what is lifted
up, whatever word lifted from
whatever throat it’s lodged—
there being only one throat
between us—past perception,
(anything but arrangement)
& nevertheless perceiving,
as we must, what moves between
us, quickening, no longer a roof,
but atmosphere, precursor
& remnant of speech, remaining,
as it must, perhaps, the least
effective of our music
