Kelly, Robert

English

Bard College

Bard CollegeBard Digital CommonsRobert Kelly Manuscripts Robert Kelly Archive10-2002octH2002Robert KellyBard CollegeFollow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.bard.edu/rk_manuscriptsThis Manuscript is brought to you for free and open access by the RobertKelly Archive at Bard Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusionin Robert Kelly Manuscripts by an authorized administrator of Bard DigitalCommons. For more information, please contactdigitalcommons@bard.edu.Recommended CitationKelly, Robert, "octH2002" (2002). Robert Kelly Manuscripts. Paper 994.http://digitalcommons.bard.edu/rk_manuscripts/994THE MARTYROLOGY   of all who meant me saints day by day through the common year because the calendar is one long rosary dhikr I recite the memories mindful of mind  behind my mind that brings them to me  the days the Rumī dances cycles of harmony onward in hesitant blood two beats forward one beat back  one is ibn means the son of two, ab the cluster of twinned desire they call a mother they call a father    so rise and fall by number the call:  whisper the saint’s name into your hand so that it tickles the palm then you know she’s listening and what you feel there on your thin skin is the beginning of her answer you bend  low to listen close to every mouth because who knows who she chooses to talk to you now with her words in someone else’s delicate mouth  rosary handler, the amber beads rehearsing all your touches mantra of the luminous negative the bright Nihil of the renaissance those who knew that meaning comes from music and the words are just some silly afterthought like the taste of her spit in your mouth after her kisses  mantra of her telling your lips  things intersect.   Sunlight intersects with wood fire in winter or spring crucifix  zikr they said in Turkey all the pronunciations of the single dance the one the breath does round the hands  breathe your name into my mouth so that I love thee  thought forming crystal in the heart until you see the unfathomable fact so close to you at night the bats are scared by the glow around your forehead   that man is remembering too much, they think we love to move quickly among the unremembering newness of the night  where everything is possible again as sometimes a human passes another on the street and looks into the vague turmoil of his eyes and thinks: that man reads too much he should play with a ball and a stick he should walk in the woods with frivolous company he should listen as the leaves underfoot try to answer the birds’ shrill riddles overhead he should try to discover the color of the world with his eyes closed  he drowses under the apple tree he wakes after twilight has finished its erasures  the intersection of night with knife is appetite, the dismal geology of desire stirs beneath your ground,     no love without its earthquake, sulfur fumeroles spitting insidious commentary because you boasted of your love it is your air your leaf, your laura, so now the stink pervades like the nasty look of a footnote you see out of the bottom of your eye down at the base of the page of text you thought was meant just for you a billet doux but no, a text is anybody’s   you think I’m yours because you want me and all want is wisdom but all wisdom wonders in the dark  nothing belongs to you at all just the intersection the insertion point the envelope slit open the fatal living message read   So in the old man’s room a teaspoon of sugar of lead intersects with a moon beam how can you answer?  the telephone rings at 4 am revising the future  she who taught you language erases the words.   The intersection of faith with science: Tarot card of a woman in a window we are in the street below we see enough of her to want her terribly, vagueness all round her, the dense numerals of brick around her aperture ― she is looking at what must be me but I could be anyone staring right now lovelorn out of shared eyes  how many bricks in the picture? her hands at the throat of her gown to hide?  to spread wide and offer you her breasts at last?  to be so far from such a conscious thing can a man climb up there to her just by remembering?  intersection of history with hands a handshake with the invisible people saying a new rosary five new alchemies to think about, zikr as you go around the world holding the globes in your hand  repetition.  Repetition intersects with remembering, a bead of agate or olive wood or malachite or steel, a plastic bead and each one has a different feel. What else could we know about the world?          18 October 2002  WITH KANT IN AMERICA  Their religious ideas are very confused.  Nothing is crazier than their dream sickness. If someone dreams that he kills somebody, he goes and kills him just like the dream.      The dream disease the sickness is a quest to turn the world inside out the dream become the day I love you because I dream of you or kill  all verbs become the same imperative, every action casts an angry shadow out there where the innocent non-dreamers live  o you do wrong to call your visionaries dreamers a Visionary stays awake at night and reads the face of fire the face of silence keeps away from that pestilent bazaar inside  a quest is a disease (suchen is seek, sucht is sick) deep memory trace of a place you’ve never been  it makes us move to it, a ritual rigid in the mind to get there  a rose overlooked.         19 October 2002    When I think of the way to your house I think of the mint and rosemary my feet crush on my way to the back door  why is there a smell to everything and every beast has its own voice the foxes come to talk with us to tell me what you mean  and everything will be true until I sleep.          19 October 2002         (section of The Language of Eden)  I think my father killed my mother I’ll never know I tried to warn her  all I want is to know what you want how can you want what I want what I want comes from me  menstrual blood or milk or semen what I want is what stains the world how can you want a world that smells like me  your world is odorless and full of books that’s why you fill it with tobacco smoke to hide the smell of your patients  to hide the smell of what I want if you want to know what I want stop smoking stop reading stop talking  climb inside my body and try to find your way out that’s what I do all day long and all night the devils make fun of me  and make me love what imprisons me you sit there listening stuffed and rigid is your cock stiff, is that the only part of you that listens, what do you know about wanting, want what I want and you’d jump out the window, nobody is there for me, nobody in the room for me nobody outside to break my fall  about your father though, did other people think he killed her, and the police? look I am the principal evidence the crime and the witness all in one frightened woman if I didn’t exist she’d still be alive she died in childbirth but twenty years later I broke my way out of her I should have stayed inside I think he killed her I know she died I tried to warn her I slept beside her so many nights to keep him from coming to her to bother her to hurt her he wanted to hurt her she kept him from me I used to lie beside her wanting him to come  but did he actually kill her isn’t it enough I’m here and you bother me with your questions just listen just listen, I don’t know I don’t know but I’m telling I wanted him to come of course doesn’t everybody wanted and wanted not like a fucking daisy you pick the petals off one by one pick want pick not want come to me and be mine, she did because I wanted you say you want to know what I want what if what I want makes somebody die do you still want my wanting then do you know how terrible that is I’ll never know the truth but I do know what I wanted and she’s dead  and he? he lives inside himself somewhere and never calls do other people think he killed her?  there are no other people there are no papers you’ve got to read the story in me I am your pages and you’re not doing a good job all this shit about desire I’m alone I’m alone I’m alone do you get the idea now alive is the same word as alone with different letters I wanted to warn her I wanted us to be alone together who? don’t you understand anything maybe I do maybe I just want you to say it my kiss is a judas kiss nobody who matters is alive he wanted to hurt her to get at me I wanted him to hurt me as if I were a doorstep and never a real house she was the house I lay beside her my arms around her and all the things I wanted happened, happened but when you get what you want it doesn’t feel like what you wanted I wanted another thing and this thing came pretending that it came from what I wanted but it lied they all lied she died from my desire he said I can’t say it any clearer a woman gets out of a car when it’s moving she falls on the side of the road her dress flies over her face another car goes over her this is my mother who can say where all the bruises were born where she got the wounds that kill her from the fall or from the second car the innocent fool who killed her or still inside the first car with her husband with her daughter who knows where she got her wound or why she tried to get out of the vehicle nobody can say but you keep asking me questions don’t ask any more I feel you itching to ask me did she fall or did he push her was she crazy don’t you dare ask me if my mother was insane, I lay beside her so many nights the thoughts along the curves of our body fitted together and we breathed together we protected each other from him from wanting him a long time it was easy, I said I was frightened I needed to be with her I pretended to be a little neurotic to be afraid of alone in the dark she let me be with her she understood what we both were afraid of she knew I was her clever little actress just like her and we were safe together though in the daytime sometimes she complained or pretended that I should learn to sleep alone well now I sleep alone  how long did you both live that way? I told you I told you not to ask it was a summer really only after my freshman year and he was home all that summer too the three of us in the place we had in the mountains no room for a horse I hated my room the wasps in the window I felt them crawl over me at night saying nothing, I know they really didn’t but I felt them touch me the room was too small it smelled of wood that made it easier for me to sleep with her and he slept on a daybed for weeks he didn’t seem to mind he never said he cooked breakfast every morning and looked at her but everything was ok  but I knew what was going on beneath I could feel his mind at night working its way between her body and my body and I could feel him wanting us both I got confused I think I wanted him        <20 October 2002> EVERY  every needs new every word needed every  day for day  or without rain  even too many cancellations hand on throttle  motorman wrist proposing to be  a train not tram furnace room coal bin behind me  and what will you do there cut my hair?  torture of barbers dentists strange hands on one’s own tender periphery plus pain  from the smell of the one to the drill of the other the body isolate upon a tilting throne  people handle other people weapons of empathy so many sentences so few words  light house or church steeple sea or piazza things wonder a child a word is its location  every word gets under your skin  even here I can put a house in a dish or this day set a star on a table and wear you on my arm you who are part Jewish but which part?  the undertow scoops sand out from under feet one falls backwards as if to cure all the frantic going of the sea  by just lying there, o trusty allopath in a world where everything’s the same you couldn’t get a difference if you died  and you think you’re too young for me! didn’t we find a rare Japanese tree in purple flower in death’s garden didn’t we bring the pods and berries home to plant a new clock in our backyard a moondial to pace out nights and go by that disdaining all the sad escapements of Swiss clocks fluidly fanciful and a million years between the message and the envelope I yearn to read  wake now  forgive my fidelity my firefox my habit of casting shadows on each wall I pass and reading them as if they were a proclamation from the real government, the aldermen of time.  it’s all a glorious mistake I think my dream’s a message from the pope  cars need lubes men make mistakes to soothe the friction of incessant will  I’m not telling you anything you don’t know since I’m American I try to sell it to you fearful of the blasphemies that blossom so easy on my dubious lips I won’t tell you what I just thought now.          21 October 2002 HOW  How to go on in a time when everything is memoir and conversation and nothing is made  no creation of the never experienced have we turned imagination inside out to make it measure the all too known?  how will we get to the mercy of the dark, beyond?           21 October 2002    Too tired to make sense I relent and love you quiet as a bridge  in cloud shade let me cross to you too long I’ve tried to help the river on its way  a dead tree burns better than a living.          21 October 2002    Resting my head on my hands I smell soap reminds me my hands are clean  there are things to do beyond the senses someone is waiting.           21 October 2002 PETRA   Find one last word to describe Petra of the Nabatæans the red rock city you see in the National Geographic every twenty years or so  rock lives a long time you do too you keep reading the picture you shelter from the desert sun in those shadow-shallow hard carved doorways  you remember all the other words you tried to remember one by one you used them you used them up like Dante with his yellow rose a flower that only blooms on the other side of your vocabulary where people are still alive inside the rock.          21 October 2002 

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