When travelling, days, as in labels, as in this is Saturday in the gold mine region of Australia, are confused. I am watching more than writing. But right now writing more than watching.
Davin asks about time. Time in a poem. Time is this.
Does he mean cadence? Is he an angry boar released in Arkansas by an ex-prince, rich and moved to American. Maybe he misses the hunting of boars, the slow and then fast runs through forests. Firing guns and releasing dogs. But then Davin won’t catch all his angry swines (swine do not need plurality, vote, vote), and later football teams will mascot his failed hunts. Somewhere in those two sentences, the subject was turned, interrogated to exhaustion. No will. Nothing to determine ownership after death.
So I’m staying in an orphanage, brick and wood raftered complex recently adopted by a mega-resort conglomeration. It is semi-cold here, around 40 or 50 (American style metrics) and there is an outdoor pool, semi-heated and semi-indoors. Last night I went for a lonely swim, chlorine fog and the side pool drains made conversational noises. I imagined a small group of important men just outside the fog, smoking various combustibles and discussing what to do with the unmarked orphan graves found at the lakes edge, always at the lake’s edge. My room has high ceilings and borrowed thrift (or opp for southern hemi-kids) furniture. Down most hallways is a common room called a library, ceramic books, four together with titles suggesting romance and science, book ends replacing the books themselves. There are mega-resort conglomeration magazines and brochures for wine tours, craft tours, high adventure experiences in the lows of this valley.
These haphazard words are being typed at a blue table in a public Library. The main library mind you, in this town, almost a city, named Ballarat. There is fast wireless now, it being around 11 in the morning on a Saturday, but children and old men with new laptops are filling the spaces, so that speed will wane, cold and sunny outside.
Across from me is one metal row of the reference section (numbers 304.4 to 425 ONF). Four titles: Dictionary of Wars, Rivers for Life, Protocol and Producers, Convicts. A large green book, faded and binding worn, has papers/notes fountaining from the top (nouns as verbs as nouns). I want to read them, but I most likely won’t.
From behind the woman in the white hooded and fur rimmed coat appeared to be a child. Turning around aged her over 50 years.
Each paragraph is smaller than the paragraph preceding.
Trend now ends. I am thinking about interfaces. Many months ago, Christine Hume, a curious and long angled poet, recently a mother, and who took me to see a Rushdie multimedia play in
Cadence is one way to think about time. The ways that cadence can be introduced in electronic contexts both reconnects us to the performative/oral roots of literature and allows us to reimagine the place of cadence in poetry. If you follow the linked text “Time is this” (which you should if you haven’t), you get to “read” Sun Storm over Air Traffic Mystery, which is pure cadence (or none at all?) with the language stripped away. There is a rhythm, and even a human face mouthing along. But there are no words.