Imaginary ordinary

Pen went through the wash

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Fri, 23 Feb 2024 20:32:00 +0000

sunny day I found my eyes
overflowing with a dark substance

blood transfused with ink
dries but will not clot

on a highway feeling for
some hidden wound

not tenderness
the promise of
explanatory power

send fresh bandages
up in smoke
signal for the wolf
I have no kill

park in the usual spot
engine centered on old black blots
darkened room
red digits
tomorrow's alarm
a moment

a measure
sound an unseen clock

The consolation of Simeon and Anna

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Fri, 09 Dec 2022 03:45:00 +0000

The tilted earth
the crooked world
progresses on its pilgrim path
each moment comes connected to the last

the swallow has built of mud
a home above the crown of a temple colonnade
to lay young
dawn alights from height to height

consolation rests on these who have aged
half-cracked by reckless hope,
by clinging with both hands to an impossible thing
people from whose conversation
passers-by find the quickest exit

consolation like a fair morning
after days of rain in the hills
rain on high places
running down deep scars
thundering through dry beds
livening

as if an endless, weary orbit were suddenly to be made straight
as if everything you ever sought were brought past where you sat

as if in the lightning and the storm of Sinai
the terror wailing across an Egyptian night
the cloud, the fire, blinding glory
is a father, a mother-love rendered by a child

in whose image is your own

His glory will appear upon you

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Wed, 07 Dec 2022 04:19:00 +0000

The streetlight flicks on

in the first dusk, its usual slight halo,
knocked loose by the pelting flakes,
forming like a light cone borne
by snow to the earth
the whole host descending
from lost nations

from the dark sky
from an unnumbered place
what is a morning
but a sighting of one star
at its rising?
what is waking
but a journey across sand
laden with the last perfumes of sleep?

last night's snow found enough warmth
to coat this tree
from stump to twig
with a thin wall of ice

locked against the dawn
whose light though sounds it with a tone of bells
and all the branches to a thin place

as if with portals shine:

the glory of the Lord has risen
upon you
arise, shine for your light has come

the mystery of illumination

the provision of a place to hold the light

though heavily it wears
on barren winter limbs--
transform this crooked tree

transplant from a holy city and

the shine of it
the telling of the shine of it

like myrrh

in unction,

but this gift

of frankincense the wafting

the lift of scent off its burning
shine-spent

weightless and unnumbered
the sun will no more be your light by day;
by night
you will not need
the brightness of the moon; but over you

the Lord will rise

and His glory
will appear
upon you.

Daddy's little Valentine

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 18:15:00 +0000

ok, yes, i wanted
to be a hero for you
not for my ego only
i wanted you to be able to have a hero
simple as that

but of course i am only human
and it hurts too much
to have my mistakes be
hero-sized

but loving you
i will still claim
as my superpower
because it is the one thing
where nothing will stop me

For the memory of John Prine

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Wed, 08 Apr 2020 06:59:00 +0000

One of his songs I like.
Boundless love

the giving up of metaphor, and the moment of giving up

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Wed, 11 Dec 2019 06:40:00 +0000

boxer falling

from the ring

bird that doesn't sing

toad in your hand

sleet

in the sky

goldfish that hasn't died

coors can in the lake

saying nothing while we wait

night in all alone

lunch in the cafeteria, on my phone

I have let fall

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Wed, 13 Nov 2019 09:18:00 +0000

In autumn evenings fall in a sigh like the slough of the plow
that cuts its line slightly idle
the urgent corn blades have skeltered brown
across the maple-red ringed field.
what hems the idle is just cold
with its taste of ice at every breath

the livestock warm the barn
these are just memories of hanging around friend's farm
the warmth of the animals I can still feel
and the sweet stench of their warmth
and their fearsome stupidity immobilized
as they watch and feed and watch
while the crap slips from their body
like the steam
rises
from the fields
again
each morning
these
are just
some memories
I have
let fall

The depot

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Thu, 18 Apr 2019 04:42:00 +0000

the world is full of empty things
like the part of time in which a road
to anywhere becomes a road
to the places you already know
and, arriving, know
you will know
them not

the world is full of distances like
the distance between now
and the last time
you could not say what was this thing
bursting through your chest
and you chased the pieces everywhere they would alight

but this can't really be called a distance
because distance must be measured
by an imagination that persists through
every thing it marks
and without a distance you can't journey, either

so it was
it slowed to only a depot
where you may wait
for some to arrive
others to depart

Problematic Eden, by idle Aristotle

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Thu, 31 May 2018 04:27:00 +0000

at first each thing was named for the work it did

that was what a thing was

a tree thing did all the tree work

and there was no work it did that was not tree

and you did not

have a name for yourself, no thing did

until you saw its work was done

and you could not see the ends of your effort

because that would be a new effort and so on

but we were born and died by the millions

and still we did not know how to speak our name

in the time of naming, we did not speak a name to ourselves

because all things seemed in our reach, all things seemed out of reach

but reachable

we did not say this is our reach, this is our human work

so we could not say we do no work that is not human

what are the problems of the tree? its problems are not its work

they are other work from other things, but this problem

is not itself nameable by its work, as we were not nameable by our work

though we seem a thing, we will not say what thing

we will work our work but our work will be beyond our work

when the earth was young we could not say our names

and now the earth is old and our work is the work of other things upon

the names of things which work their work upon the earth,

which do no work which is not in their name,

and our work that makes our name is not a thing which can be named;

we call our problems up by names that have no work

an outward visible sign

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Fri, 23 Feb 2018 06:08:00 +0000

scientifically i do not know
if i still possess a soul
but there was something that was carried along upon that thought
soul searching
soul craft
soul mate
soul singing
i can still remember all of it
how the sky curled around me and i knew myself in the very spot where i stood
and the trees ended in thousands
of fingertips lightly tracing lines
how the tall grasses
forgot that i could catch their whisper as they rose
and then lay flat under invisible passages of,
yes, soul searching winds until 30 birds lit up from the old pasture
could no longer keep from flight

A sort of journey in china

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Sat, 10 Feb 2018 04:26:00 +0000

I set out one day to lose myself
i took a set of old china and dropped each piece
one by one
into the river
onto the street
upon the snow, the grass, the sheets

do you know how to fall? to fail?
to shatter because you have felt the immobile earth
press apart your hidden seams

to smack a yielding flow, buoyant,
unbalanced,
in slow motion slide sideways and spin
in wordless eddies on a verge where light is bent

to settle noiselessly, scattering the frail
innocent snow around your feet, a tiny scarring tempest,
push of descent and rush of air into the void of where you were

to make no real impression except to be nuzzled by
parted leaves of grass and turn the green below you into mud
from hiding light

to sit blank upon the bed except for lines of stylized scenes in blue
painted beneath impassive gloss. still i did not lose myself
though i knew better now the things i lost

insects in the street light

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Wed, 19 Jul 2017 04:33:00 +0000

on the 610 loop
the outer ring highway
street lights on the bridge
over the mississippi
catch insect wings light as snowflakes
in their beams

you might feel your skin crawling
for a moment, your nerves preparing to feel
piercing probiscus, but enclosed in your speeding
car, the scene has a little magic to it

anything can be beautiful that is not touched
and i know it is only a little leap that would take me
out of my life, carried beside my body on the momentum of my ride.
where has the enchantment of this world
faded to, the years pile like insecticide
these swarming things
drawn to a point of light on a spring night
they carry up the lost love,
the warm wet earth
last years leaves with their mortifying sweetness
bearing the enchantment of the world away
leaving just a hum of it that makes you
involuntarily itch as you pass by

1920s, Hungarian school

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Tue, 04 Jul 2017 04:12:00 +0000

the sky is filled with Rorschach blots
candy clouds
and future selves
why do they wave
why do they wisp
why do they lisp about the stars
that seem so crisp when night arrives
like future lives all burning bright

the tautest string will move the spheres
circling between our ears
the notes are stored between the bows
by maple, spruce, glue soft and old;
when you have no more to release
and nothing more to try to hold to
farewell future, so long past
rippled runs on old panes of glass
what did you see what did you perceive
say it all once more to me

before you go

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Fri, 19 May 2017 06:08:00 +0000

time could be measured in the spin
that tugs along
electron lines, the fullness of molecules
one to another sign their bluffs
their wager tingles in the mind
the pull of it till poof
you are crumpled in your weight, the you conglomerate
folds

but now
just wait
have you never felt it?
to be free of these tugs in matter bay, lines upon the liner
to steer to rope to steer
like beetle rustling dung

if you have, you know the whisper of the lake
upon wheel of car

and how the universe begs and begs
for the soul to thin and thin into one single note
one single string

ah, god, but now upon the razor edge
of this chopping gut-wrench wedge life chosen then
just then
how it will be your own fierce thing
your own

why could I not have made this known too
if it is known to some
what weightlessness is life and death
known too
the pierced through feel
of darkness by each point of light

god damn, don't tell me, never
unless you have tried them all
that the night does not indeed advance to the step
step step of stars upon the way
each beam still paid for, dearly, it is true
by material crush and crash
but you will burn on strong
you will yourself at times be light unfettered
you will, I know, for I have seen your weightless self
a mirage in the morning sky

Ice storrm likely overnight, clearing throughout the day to a high of 55

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 04:46:00 +0000

of a february mind
late april to the shower a chill
one thousand feet above the innocence of
monet that grows on trees
their timbrel sprigs aflow
abeat abeat the sting of thought
stung through with cling of cold
a touch that lingers like the coat of love
upon all forms all forms below
it is a gift dreamed in a gusty night
a diatribe equal to the groundling earth
equal, precise, a measuring in ice
of each line and lobe
like thought is measured in true belief
with the frightful blast of dawn aflame
dripped and trickled to the soil
that can sleep out a thousand strorms strong.

old oak after an April's morning rain

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Fri, 21 Apr 2017 05:27:00 +0000

you may observe how
when the rains shatter against
the grit of an oak trunk
it's dyed black from a morning's bluster
as a sinner's heart
and each twig tip dipped like a fountain pen
into a bottle of green ink-deep
as ocean bloom illumined by fingers of sun
is spent of vibrancy when it has traced symmetric lobes
by which you say for certain, "oak"

dispelled from such enchanting origin
through all the months the light is firm
is the business I have no care to note
where all the light goes in

5 year oaklings in gravel parking lot median on a fine April night

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Thu, 20 Apr 2017 05:13:00 +0000

the trees backlit
by steroid lot light beautiful as any song
new leaves muscling apart tender buds
might feel a thousand pricks
like a limb in the night after your autopilot moves you
to shift your tourniquet weight
presents to your consciousness a catalog of nerves
influxed by the suffuse of blood from the rush of veins
out to every little cell that makes you whole

have you felt it? the coming alive,
if you had passed unconscious through
stillness fixed as frozen soil
it might seem then
that life is too fierce an effect to follow
dust to dust

and yet
sap rises, rivers flow, the thawing ground
shifts its weight and the crust is pricked right through
and there is perhaps no life that
could be free from such suffusing motion

all furrows to them a kind light.

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Tue, 06 Dec 2016 10:23:00 +0000

in the morning you will know
better, the sun in these crystalline clouds
is full of the abstract, so that
the winter is always
full of realizations
(the air is without weight
from shedding all these words like gifts
upon the windows' margins,
from trying to speak its whispers through)

but one
cannot
care for each in the way
it should be done, all the long nights till spring
with all the furrows numb upon your face;
howsoever the freeze may whisper well those wildly
intricate sayings sown
from less feeble a sun.

you are what you will give away

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Mon, 25 Jul 2016 05:52:00 +0000

my daughters
how real they are to me
with scrawls on scrap paper
they draw of myself and themselves
grinning clear across waxed line oval faces

and many other fantastical things
requiring extensive explanation

in this lack of cumbrance
they riffle past numb undergrowth
straight to where I feel things right

that part that can be given away
scrawls across other lives
as sure as wake from the plunk of prow
spreads on the glass of lake

Amelia's Song

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Sun, 07 Feb 2016 06:10:00 +0000

When I came home a few days ago, Amelia had written a song, and we came up with a tune for it together that night. So, here's Amelia's Song, which is a lullaby that ranges through mountains and dungeons, grass, trees, ravines and rubble, life and death and a little child.

You won't believe what happens at the end of this song!

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Sat, 30 Jan 2016 04:53:00 +0000

A hummingbird is hard to see

Christmas past memories

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Thu, 14 Jan 2016 05:23:00 +0000

A very serious piano ballad played and sung with appropriate flourishes.

holidays are for ghosts

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Sat, 28 Nov 2015 06:32:00 +0000

what we call now the holidays were holy days once,
i suppose, dangerous days
when the harvest was in and the fruit of time
was ripe on the hearths

a heart full of time knows invisible things
time being the first

and out of time my grandparents accost me
after all, I am living in their former home
am I not
and do I know their invisible selves
I did not, I do not

I think I would like them to approve
of these holiday meals, for instance
but what kind of shape is that for a memory
a sort of mummery wrap
what is frightening of the past is when things not living
move with your own animation
like taking down old photographs to make them dance
Poe could do something with that, do something
with their eyes, have them give
commands

when you die, what is left?
is is what time took out of you
like this house it took out of my grandfathers arms
pulling nails from his blows for affixing studs
pulling the slop from plaster until it hardened over seams

and more it took from my grandmother
children, meals, washing, laughter
and all her fears
where is that house, did it square up or harden
into father, uncles, aunts
houses cannot be found in houses, there is no it
where you say look here
for the invisible thing

it is just a heart full of time that knows
how to look, like my grandmother in her last days
in her dementia
or drug-induced dreams
speaking to me with all the time that was not mine
knowing me as three persons or more
i told her, as any number of them,
what I knew of her that was my own, very little it seemed
just gatherings in this house, at this table
it moved her without knowing my name for more than five minutes
at a time, the animation was from somewhere else
and it could carry no judgement with it at all
since that is the sort of thing that time carries you away from
and leaves in the lumber and scrapes across the seams

if there are ghosts living in holy days
do they wish you had known, could remember what they had been
or are they themselves because they are invisible
in what is left being from time?

and there was 2pm, first thanksgiving

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Thu, 26 Nov 2015 06:07:00 +0000

the leaves
in the cranny by the loading dock
at the back of the warehouse
where freight sometimes rolls in across
semi trailer decks
are clenched like old fists
flit fast as sparrows in the fitful gust
winds gentle folded by brick walls
into cyclones, hurricanes in scale to the fish-eyed puddle
they brood, they hover over.

I say sometimes,
in the autumn, if not in other seasons,
to myself to bide--
after gales the air hangs free
what fists in crannies clung
no longer are alive when one's breathing shallows
things known as true vie with little else
in dry time and cold,
and yet clench afternoons by truck-fulls
and shake and shake their trust
to scale--to scale like needle heads
on which to shake.

so? dignity should
empty trees, stand naked through the snows
believe or not believe
earth's command subtle as sap
"make green" and
cunning creep, flying fly
fruit bear within it seed

know down to your bones
to cleave like flesh.
or should I say instead
forsake thy time and time and time?
for what faces you, scale to scale
help fold into
help

A clarification

noreply@blogger.com (will keillor) — Thu, 05 Nov 2015 07:46:00 +0000

The question is what exactly it is that we are up to. The answer is clearly that we do not know. That we do not know precisely is most easily followed by that we do not care--we don't care in the sense that it is not an emotional or intellectual necessity to know. In fact, it seems quite reasonable to suppose that not knowing what we are up to facilitates being up to it. It's like the story of Peter on the water.

But in every smaller sense, knowing what we are up to is much better for being up to it. Well, that's not quite true. Knowing you are becoming friends does not help you become friends, knowing you are falling in love does not help you fall in love. Knowing you are doing well leading a group of people does not help you lead them well. It might even break the spell and let you down into the water.

It might, or it might not. But knowing you are trying to repair drywall helps you go about it. Knowing you need to target a certain market helps you do so. Knowing that you need to increase sales might help you target a new market. Knowing a team is relying on you not to blow it is closer to the tipping point of not being helpful, depending on your personality. Looking into whether it will be beneficial to society as a whole if your company increases sales is helpful only in very special cases relative to increasing sales, and in other special cases relative to other things. Looking into why anyone would get up to the business of doing what you are doing in the first place...the answer is clearly that we do not know.

Well...we do not know. But what is the difference between knowing and not knowing? I don't mean what is the difference, when faced with 2+2=, of knowing 4 or not knowing 4. I don't even mean the difference between not knowing 4 and not knowing "+" or "=" or even "2." There are always many things we could learn.

I mean what is different when you approach ultimate questions, as in the example about sales. Your questions are on a trajectory in that example. They move from requiring knowledge of fewer things to eventually require knowledge of all things. The question is approaching an infinite point: why does everything in the universe and any other universes do just as it does? As you move along this trajectory, there is a subtle shift in the nature of what an answer could be. It is subtle because of the remarkably fine gradation. We seem to use the same word for the thing you would know in answer to the question: truth.

In the same sort of way, a scientist could study an organism, the organism is part of an ecosystem, eventually you can get to something like the Gaia theory where the planet can be seen as an organism. Presumably you could go on from there. The nature of being is graduated out until it too becomes a universal.

This is what I mean in earlier posts when I put truth and being as sort of points in a grid or points from which other things move.