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@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+---
+title: 'And'
+project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
+epigraph: |
+"What is your favorite word?"
+"And. It is so hopeful."
+...
+
+And you were there in the start of it all \
+and you folded your hands like little doves \
+that would fly away like an afterthought \
+and you turned to me the window light on your face \
+and you asked me something that I did not recognize \
+like a great throng of people who are not you \
+and I asked are we in a church \
+and you answered with the look on your face \
+of someone grieving something gone for years \
+ but that they had been reminded of \
+by a catch in the light or in someone's voice \
+and I think maybe it could have been mine \
+and I looked away thickly my head was in jelly \
+and I didn't get an answer from you but I got one
+
+I looked at the man in front of us with glasses \
+he was speaking and holding a book \
+and I didn't understand him he was far away \
+and I could tell I was missing something important \
+and you nodded to yourself at something he said
@@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
+---
+title: 'On seeing the panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site'
+project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
+...
+
+So it's the fucking moon. Big deal. As if \
+you haven't seen it before, hanging in the sky \
+like a piece of rotten meat nailed to the wall,
+
+a maudlin love letter (the i's dotted with hearts) \
+tacked to the sky's door like ninety-eight theses. \
+Don't stare at it like it means anything.
+
+Don't give it the chance to collect meaning \
+from your hand like an old pigeon. Don't dare ascribe \
+it a will, or call it fickle, or think it has any say
+
+in your affairs. It's separated from your life \
+by three hundred eighty-four thousand miles of space, \
+the same distance you stepped away from time that night
+
+you said your love was broken, a crippled gyroscope \
+knocking in the dark. It was then that time fell apart, \
+had a nervous breakdown and started following you
+
+everywhere, moonfaced, always asking where you're going. \
+You keep trying to get away from it but it nuzzles closer \
+and sings you songs that sound like the cooing of a dove \
+that will only escape again into an empty sky at dawn.
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
+---
+title: 'Ars poetica'
+project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
+...
+
+What is poetry? Poetry is. Inasmuch as life is, so is poetry. Here is
+the problem: life is very big and complex. Human beings are neither. We
+are small, simple beings that don’t want to know all of the myriad
+interactions happening all around us, within us, as a part of us, all
+the hours of every day. We much prefer knowing only that which is just
+in front of our faces, staring us back with a look of utter contempt.
+This is why many people are depressed.
+
+Poetry is an attempt made by some to open up our field of view, to maybe
+check on something else that isn’t staring us in the face so
+contemptibly. Maybe something else is smiling at us, we think. So we
+write poetry to force ourselves to look away from the mirror of our
+existence to see something else.
+
+This is generally painful. To make it less painful, poetry compresses
+reality a lot to make it more consumable. It takes life, that seawater,
+and boils it down and boils it down until only the salt remains, the
+important parts that we can focus on and make some sense of the
+senselessness of life. Poetry is life bouillon, and to thoroughly enjoy
+a poem we must put that bouillon back into the seawater of life and make
+a delicious soup out of it. To make this soup, to decompress the poem
+into an emotion or life, requires a lot of brainpower. A good reader
+will have this brainpower. A good poem will not require it.
+
+What this means is: a poem should be self-extracting. It should be a
+rare vanilla in the bottle, waiting only for someone to open it and
+sniff it and suddenly there they are, in the orchid that vanilla came
+from, in the tropical land where it grew next to its brothers and sister
+vanilla plants. They feel the pain of having their children taken from
+them. A good poem leaves a feeling of loss and of intense beauty. The
+reader does nothing to achieve this—they are merely the receptacle of
+the feeling that the poem forces onto them. In a way, poetry is a crime.
+But it is the most beautiful crime on this crime-ridden earth.
@@ -0,0 +1,25 @@
+---
+title: 'The ocean overflows with camels'
+project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
+...
+
+We found your shirt deep in the dark water, \
+caught on the clothesline of sleeping pills. \
+Your head on the shore was streaming tears \
+like sleeves or the coronas of saints saved \
+from fire. The burning bush began crying \
+like a child who misses his mother. Traffic \
+slammed shut like an eye. God's mean left hook \
+knocked us out, and we began swimming. \
+Bruises bloomed like algae on a lake. \
+Your father beat your chest and screamed \
+for someone to open a window. The air \
+stopped breathing. Fish clogged its gills. \
+Birds sang too loudly, trying to drown out \
+your father's cries, but all their sweetness \
+was not enough. No polite noises will be made \
+anymore, he told us, clawing your breastbone. \
+He opened your heart to air again. Camels \
+flowed from you both like water from the rock. \
+God spoke up, but nobody listened to him. \
+We hung you up on the line to dry.
@@ -0,0 +1,24 @@
+---
+title: 'The Boar'
+project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
+...
+
+Now the ticking clocks scare me. \
+The empty rooms, clock towers, belfries; \
+I am terrified by them all.
+
+I really used to enjoy going to church, \
+singing in the choir, listening to the sermon. \
+Now the chairs squeal like dying pigs---
+
+It was the boar that did it. \
+Fifteen feet from me that night \
+in the grass, rooting for God \
+knows what, finding me instead.
+
+I ran, not knowing where or how, \
+not looking for his pursuit of me. \
+I ran to God's front door, found \
+it locked, found the house empty
+
+with a note saying, "Condemned."
@@ -0,0 +1,22 @@
+---
+title: 'Dead man'
+project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
+...
+
+A dead man finds his way into our hearts \
+simply by opening the door and walking in. \
+He pours himself a drink, speaks aimlessly \
+about hunting or some bats he saw \
+on the way over, wheeling around each other. \
+Look how they spin, he says, it's like the \
+ripples atoms make as they hurl past each other \
+in the space between their bodies. \
+We mention the eels at the aquarium, how \
+their bodies knot while mating. The dead man \
+was a boyscout once, and tied a lot of knots. \
+His favorite was the one with the rabbit \
+and the hole, and the rabbit going in and out \
+and around the tree. The dead man liked it \
+because he liked to pretend that the rabbit \
+was running from a fox, and the rabbit \
+always ended up safe, back in his hole.
@@ -0,0 +1,25 @@
+---
+title: 'The angel to Abraham'
+project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
+...
+
+Abraham, Abraham, you are old and cannot hear: \
+what if you miss my small voice amongst the creaking \
+of your own grief, kill your son unknowing \
+of what he will be, and commit Israel to nothing?
+
+Abraham, you must know or hope that God \
+will not allow your son to die; you must know \
+that this is a test, but then why \
+are you so bent on Isaac's destruction? \
+Look at your eyes; there is more than fear \
+there. I see in your eyes desperation, \
+a manic passion to do right by your God \
+whom you are not able to see or know.
+
+Am I too late? I will try to stay \
+your old hands, the knife clenched \
+within them, intent on ending life.
+
+Will you hear my small voice amongst the creaking, \
+or will it be the chance bleating of a passing ram?
@@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
+---
+title: 'Feeding the raven'
+project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
+...
+
+You never can tell just when Charlie Sheen will enter your life. For me,
+it was last Thursday. I was reading some translation of a Japanese
+translation of "The Raven" in which the Poe and the raven become
+friends. At one point the raven gets very sick and Poe feeds him at his
+bedside and nurses him back to health. The story was very heartwarming
+and sad at the same time and my tears were welling up when suddenly I
+heard a knock on my door.
+
+I shuffled over, sniffling but managing to keep my cheeks dry to open
+it. Of course Charlie was beaming on the other side, with a bag of
+flowers and a grin like a dog's. He bounded in the room without saying
+hello and threw the flowers in the sink, opened the refrigerator and
+started poking around. I said "It's nice to see you too" and went to my
+room to get a camera, as well as a notebook for him to sign.
+
+When I came back he was on the floor, hunched and groaning. I looked on
+the table to see a month-old half-gallon of milk---now cottage
+cheese---half-empty and dripping. The remnants were on his mouth, and at
+once I saw my chance to become Poe in this translation of a translation
+of a translation. I knelt next to Charlie, cradled his head in my lap.
+He looked up at me with a stare full of terror. I returned it levelly,
+making cooing noises at him until he calmed down.
+
+When he was calm he excused himself to be sick on my toilet. He wouldn't
+let me follow but said he would sign whatever I liked when he got back.
+After half an hour passed and all I'd had for company was the ticking of
+the clock, I went to the bathroom door. I knocked carefully---once, then
+twice---to no beaming face, no flowers. I opened the door. There was shit
+on the floor and the window was open. There was a breeze blowing.
@@ -0,0 +1,22 @@
+---
+title: 'On formal poetry'
+project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
+...
+
+I think that I could write formal poems \
+exclusively, or at least inclusive \
+with all the other stuff I write \
+I guess. Of course, I've already written \
+a few, this one included, though "formal" \
+is maybe a stretch. Is blank verse a form? \
+What is form anyway? I picture old \
+women counting stitches on their knitting, \
+keeping iambs next to iambs in lines \
+as straight and sure as arrows. But my sock \
+is lumpy, poorly made: it's beginning \
+to unravel. Stresses don't line up. Syl- \
+lables forced to fit like McNugget molds. \
+That cliché on the arrow? I'm aware. \
+My prepositions too---God, where's it stop? \
+The answer: never. I will never stop \
+writing poems, or hating what I write.
@@ -0,0 +1,23 @@
+---
+title: 'I am'
+project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
+...
+
+I am a great pillar of white smoke. \
+I am Lot's nameless wife encased in salt. \
+I am the wound on Christ's back as he moans \
+with the pounding of a hammer on his wrist. \
+I am the nail that holds my house together. \
+It is a strong house, built on a good foundation. \
+In the winter, it is warm and crawling things \
+cannot get in. This house will never burn down. \
+It is the house that I built, with my body \
+and with my strength. I am the only one who lives \
+here. I am both father and mother to a race \
+of dust motes that worship me as a god. I have \
+monuments built daily in my honor in dark \
+corners around the house. I destroy all of them \
+before I go to bed, but in the morning \
+there are still more. I don't think I know \
+where all of them are. I don't think I can get \
+to all of them anymore. There are too many.
@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+---
+title: 'How it happened'
+project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
+...
+
+I was away on vacation when I heard--- \
+someone sat at my desk while I was away. \
+They took my pen, while I was taking \
+surf lessons, and wrote the sun into the sky. \
+They pre-approved the earth and the waters, \
+and all of the living things, without even \
+having the decency to text me. It was not I \
+who was behind the phrase "creeping things." \
+When I got back, of course I was pissed, \
+but it was already written into the policy. \
+I'm just saying: don't blame me for Cain \
+killing Abel. That was a murder. I'm not a cop. \
+The Tower of Babel fell on its own. The ark \
+never saw a single drop of rain. I'm the drunk \
+sitting on the curb who just pissed his pants, \
+holding up a sign asking where I am.
@@ -0,0 +1,27 @@
+---
+title: 'Love Song'
+project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
+...
+
+Walking along in the dark is a good way to begin a song. Walking home in
+the dark after a long day chasing criminals is another. Running away
+from an imagined evil is no way to begin a story.
+
+I am telling you this because you wanted to know what it's like to tell
+something so beautiful everyone will cry. I am telling you because I
+want you to know what it is to keep everything inside of you. I am
+telling you.
+
+Can you see? Can you see into me and reach in your hand and pull me
+inside out, like an old shirt? Will you wear me until I unravel on your
+shoulders, will you cut me apart and use my skin to clean up the cola
+you spill on the floor when you're drunk?
+
+I want you to know that I want you to know. Do you want me? To know is
+to know. I, you want we. We want. That is why we're here. To want is to
+be is to want and I want you. Do you also? Check yes or no.
+
+There is a way to end every story, every song. Every criminal must be
+caught. Even those who cry dry their tears. I cannot tell you all I want
+because I want to tell you everything. There is no art because there is
+no mirror big enough. We wake up every day. Sometimes we sleep.
@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+title: 'Rough gloves'
+project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
+...
+
+I lost my hands & knit replacement ones \
+from spiders' threads, stronger than steel but soft \
+as lambs' wool. Catching as they do on nails \
+& your collarbone, you don't seem to like \
+their rough warm presence on your cheek or thigh. \
+I've asked you if you minded, you've said no \
+(your face a table laid with burnt meat, bread \
+so stale it could break a hand). Remember \
+your senile mother's face above that table? \
+I'd say she got the meaning of that look. \
+You'd rather not be touched by these rough gloves, \
+the only way I have to knit a love \
+against whatever winters we may enter \
+like a silkworm in a spider's blackened maw.
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
+---
+title: 'Ronald McDonald'
+project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
+...
+
+When Ronald McDonald takes off his striped shirt, \
+his coveralls, his painted face: when he no longer looks \
+like anyone or anything special, sitting next to women
+
+in bars or standing in the aisle at the grocery, \
+is he no longer Ronald? Is he no longer happy to kick \
+a soccer ball around with the kids in the park,
+
+is he suddenly unable to enjoy the french fries \
+he gets for his fifty percent off? I'd like to think \
+that he takes Ronald off like a shirt, hangs him
+
+in a closet where he breathes darkly in the musk. \
+I'd like to believe that we are able to slough off selves \
+like old skin and still retain some base self.
+
+Of course we all know this is not what happens. \
+The Ronald leering at women drunkenly is the same who \
+the next day kicks at a ball the size of a head.
+
+He is the same that hugs his children at night, \
+who has sex with his wife on the weekends when they're \
+not so tired to make it work, who smiles holding
+
+a basket of fries in front of a field. He cannot \
+take off the facepaint or the yellow gloves. They are \
+stuck to him like so many feathers with the tar
+
+of his everyday associations. His plight is that \
+of everyone's---we are what we do who we are.
@@ -0,0 +1,16 @@
+---
+title: 'The moon is gone and in its place a mirror'
+project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
+...
+
+The moon is gone and in its place a mirror. Looking at the night sky now
+yields nothing but the viewer's own face as viewed from a million miles,
+surrounded by the landscape he is only vaguely aware of being surrounded
+by. He believes that he is alone, surrounded by desert and mountain, but
+behind him---he now sees it---someone is sneaking up on him. He spins around
+fast, but no one is there on Earth. He looks back up and they are yet
+closer in the night sky. Again he looks over his shoulder but there is
+nothing, not even a desert mouse. As he looks up again he realizes it's
+a cloud above him, which due to optics has looked like someone else. The
+cloud blocks out the moon which is now a mirror, and the viewer is
+completely alone.
@@ -0,0 +1,148 @@
+---
+title: 'How to read this'
+project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
+...
+
+This book is an exploration of life, of all possible lives that could be
+lived. Each of the poems contained herein have been written by a
+different person, with his own history, culture, and emotions. True,
+they are all related, but no more than any of us is related through our
+genetics, our shared planet, or our yearnings.
+
+Fernando Pessoa wrote poems under four different identities---he called
+them *heteronyms*---that were known during his lifetime, though after his
+death over sixty have been found and catalogued. He called them
+heteronyms as opposed to pseudonyms because they were much more than
+names he wrote under. They were truly different writing selves,
+concerned with different ideas and writing with different styles:
+Alberto Caeiro wrote pastorals; Ricardo Reis wrote more formal odes;
+Álvaro de Campos wrote these long, Whitman-esque pieces (one to Whitman
+himself); and Pessoa's own name was used for poems that are kind of
+similar to all the others. It seems as though Pessoa found it
+inefficient to try and write everything he wanted only in his own self;
+rather he parceled out the different pieces and developed them into full
+identities, at the cost of his own: "I subsist as a kind of medium of
+myself, but I'm less real than the others, less substantial, less
+personal, and easily influenced by them all." de Campos said of him at
+one point, "Fernando Pessoa, strictly speaking, doesn't exist."
+
+It's not just Pessoa---I, strictly speaking, don't exist, both as the
+specific me that writes this now and as the concept of selfhood, the
+ego. Heraclitus famously said that we can't step into the same river
+twice, and the fact of the matter is that we can't occupy the same self
+twice. It's constantly changing and adapting to new stimuli from the
+environment, from other selves, from inside itself, and each time it
+forms anew into something that's never existed before. The person I am
+beginning a poem is a separate being than the one I am finishing a poem,
+and part of it is the poem I've written has brought forth some other
+dish onto the great table that is myself.
+
+In the same way, with each poem you read of this, you too could become a
+different person. Depending on which order you read them in, you could
+be any number of possible people. If you follow the threads I've laid
+out for you, there are so many possible selves; if you disregard those
+and go a different way there are quite a few more. However, at the end
+of the journey there is only one self that you will occupy, the others
+disappearing from this universe and going maybe somewhere else, maybe
+nowhere at all.
+
+There is a scene in *The Neverending Story* where Bastian is trying to
+find his way out of the desert. He opens a door and finds himself in the
+Temple of a Thousand Doors, which is never seen from the outside but
+only once someone enters it. It is a series of rooms with six sides each
+and three doors: one from the room before and two choices. In life, each
+of these rooms is a moment, but where Bastian can choose which of only
+two doors to enter each time, in life there can be any number of doors
+and we don't always choose which to go through---in fact, I would argue
+that most of the time we aren't allowed the luxury.
+
+What happens to those other doors, those other possibilities? Is there
+some other version of the self that for whatever complexities of
+circumstance and will chose a different door at an earlier moment? The
+answer to this, of course, is that we can never know for sure, though
+this doesn't keep us from trying through the process of regret. We go
+back and try that other door in our mind, extrapolating a possible
+present from our own past. This is ultimately unsatisfying, not only
+because whatever world is imagined is not the one currently lived, but
+because it becomes obvious that the alternate model of reality is not
+complete: we can only extrapolate from the original room, absolutely
+without knowledge of any subsequent possible choices. This causes a deep
+disappointment, a frustration with the inability to know all possible
+timelines (coupled with the insecurity that this may not be the best of
+all possible worlds) that we feel as regret.
+
+In this way, every moment we live is an elegy to every possible future
+that might have stemmed from it. Annie Dillard states this in a
+biological manner when she says in *Pilgrim at Tinker Creek*, "Every
+glistening egg is a memento mori." Nature is inefficient---it spends a
+hundred lifetimes to get one that barely works. The fossil record is
+littered with the failed experiments of evolution, many of which failed
+due only to blind chance: an asteroid, a shift in weather patterns, an
+inefficient copulation method. Each living person today has twenty dead
+standing behind him, and that only counts the people that actually
+lived. How many missed opportunities stand behind any of us?
+
+The real problem with all of this is that time is only additive. There's
+no way to dial it back and start over, with new choices or new
+environments. Even when given the chance to do something again, we do it
+*again*, with the reality given by our previous action. Thus we are
+constantly creating and being created by the world. The self is never
+the same from one moment to the next.
+
+A poem is like a snapshot of a self. If it's any good, it captures the
+emotional core of the self at the time of writing for communication with
+future selves, either within the same person or outside of it. Thus
+revision is possible, and the new poem created will be yet another
+snapshot of the future self as changed by the original poem. The page
+becomes a window into the past, a particular past as experienced by one
+self. The poem is a remembering of a self that no longer exists, in
+other words, an elegy.
+
+A snapshot doesn't capture the entire subject, however. It leaves out
+the background as it's obscured by foreground objects; it fails to
+include anything that isn't contained in its finite frame. In order to
+build a working definition of identity, we must include all possible
+selves over all possible timelines, combined into one person: identity
+is the combined effect of all possible selves over time. A poem leaves
+much of this out: it is the one person standing in front of twenty
+ghosts.
+
+A poem is the place where the selves of the reader and the speaker meet,
+in their respective times and places. In this way a poem is outside of
+time or place, because it changes its location each time it's read. Each
+time it's two different people meeting. The problem with a poem is that
+it's such a small window---if we met in real life the way we met in poems,
+we would see nothing of anyone else but a square the size of a postage
+stamp. It has been argued this is the way we see time and ourselves in
+it, as well: Vonnegut uses the metaphor of a subject strapped to a
+railroad car moving at a set pace, with a six-foot-long metal tube
+placed in front of the subject's eye; the landscape in the distance is
+time, and what we see is the only way in which we interact with it. It's
+the same with a poem and the self: we can only see and interact with a
+small kernel. This is why it's possible to write more than one poem.
+
+Due to this kernel nature of poetry, a good poem should focus itself to
+extract as much meaning as possible from that one kernel of identity to
+which it has access. It should be an atom of selfhood, irreducible and
+resistant to paraphrase, because it tries to somehow echo the large
+unsayable part of identity outside the frame of the self. It is the
+kernel that contains a universe, or that speaks around one that's
+hidden; if it's a successful poem then it makes the smallest circuit
+possible. This is why the commentary on poems is so voluminous: a poem
+is tightly packed meaning that commentators try to unpack to get at that
+universality inside it. A fortress of dialectic is constructed that
+ultimately obstructs the meaning behind the poem; it becomes the
+foreground in the photograph that disallows us to view the horizon
+beyond it.
+
+With this in mind, I collect these poems that were written over a period
+of four years into this book. Where I can, I insert cross-references
+(like the one above, in the margin) to other pieces in the text where I
+think the two resonate in some way. You can read this book in any way
+you'd like: you can go front-to-back, or back-to-front, or you can
+follow the arrows around, or you can work out a complex mathematical
+formula with Merseinne primes and logarithms and the 2000 Census
+information, or you can go completely randomly through like a magazine,
+or at least the way I flip through magazines. I think writing is a
+communication of the self, and I think this is the best way to
+communicate mine in all its multiversity.
@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
+---
+title: 'Mountain'
+project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
+...
+
+The other side of this mountain \
+is not the mountain. This side \
+is honey-golden, sticky-sweet, \
+full of phone conversations with mother. \
+The other side is a bell, \
+ringing in the church-steeple \
+the day mother died.
+
+The other side of the mountain \
+is not a mountain. It is a dark \
+valley crossed by a river. \
+There is a ferry at the bottom.
+
+This mountain is not a mountain. \
+I walked to the top, but it turned \
+and was only a shelf halfway up. \
+I felt like an unused Bible \
+sitting on a dusty pew.
+
+A hawk soars over the mountain. \
+She is looking for home.
@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+title: 'Serengeti'
+project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
+...
+
+The self is a serengeti \
+a wide grassland with baobab trees \
+reaching their roots deep into earth \
+like a child into a clay pot \
+A wind blows there or seems to blow \
+if he holds it up to his ear the air shifts \
+like stones in a stream uncovering a crawfish \
+it finds another hiding place watching you \
+Its eyes are blacker than wind \
+on the serengeti they are the eyes of a predator \
+they are coming toward you or receding \
+a storm cloud builds on the horizon \
+Are you running toward the rain or away from it \
+Do you stand still and crouch hoping for silence
@@ -0,0 +1,23 @@
+---
+title: 'Shipwright'
+project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
+...
+
+He builds a ship as if it were the last thing \
+holding him together, as if, when he stops, \
+his body will fall onto the plate-glass water \
+and shatter into sand. To keep his morale up \
+he whistles and sings, but the wind whistles louder \
+and taunts him: Your ship will build itself \
+if you throw yourself into the sea; time \
+has a way of growing your beard for you. \
+Soon, you'll find yourself on a rocking chair \
+on some porch made from your ship's timbers. \
+The window behind you is made from a sail, thick \
+canvas, and no one inside will hear your calling \
+for milk or a chamberpot. Your children \
+will have all sailed to the New World and left you. \
+But he tries not to listen, continues to hammer \
+nail after nail into timber after timber, \
+but the wind finally blows him into the growling ocean \
+and the ship falls apart on its own.
@@ -0,0 +1,16 @@
+---
+title: 'Spittle'
+project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
+...
+
+My body is attached to your body by a thin spittle of thought. \
+When you turn away from me, my thought is broken \
+and forms anew with something else. Ideas are drool. \
+Beauty has been slobbered over far too long. God \
+is a tidal wave of bodily fluid. Even the flea has some \
+vestigial wetness. We live in a world fleshy and dark, \
+and moist as a nostril. Is conciousness only a watery-eyed \
+romantic, crying softly into his shirt-sleeve? Is not reason \
+a square-jawed businessman with a briefcase full of memory? \
+I want to kiss the world to make it mine. I want to become \
+a Judas to reality, betray it with the wetness of emotion.
@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+---
+title: 'Squirrel'
+project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
+...
+
+He is so full in himself: \
+how far down the branch to run, \
+how long to jump, when to grab the air \
+and catch in it and turn, and land on branch \
+so gracefully it's like dying, alone \
+and warm in a bed next to a summer window \
+and the birds singing. And on that branch there \
+is the squirrel dancing among the branches \
+and you think What if he fell? but he won't \
+because he's a squirrel and that's what \
+they do, dance and never fall. It was erased \
+long ago from the squirrel, even \
+the possibility of falling was erased \
+from his being by the slow inexorable evolution \
+of squirrels, that is why all squirrels \
+are so full in themselves, full in who they are.
@@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
+---
+title: 'Swan song'
+project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
+...
+
+Swans fly overhead singing goodbye \
+to we walkers of the earth. You point \
+to them in formation, you tell me \
+you are not you. You are the air the swans \
+walk on as they journey like pilgrims \
+to a temple in the south. A curtain \
+there separates me from you, swans \
+from the air they fly through. I say \
+that you are no longer the temple, \
+that you have been through fire \
+and are now less than ash. You are \
+a mirror of me, the air without a swan. \
+Together, we are each other. You \
+and I have both nothing and everything \
+at once. We own the world and nothing in it.
@@ -0,0 +1,73 @@
+---
+title: 'Telemarketer'
+project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
+...
+
+It was one of those nameless gray buildings that could be seen from the
+street only if Larry craned his neck to almost vertical. He never had,
+of course, having heard when he first arrived in the city that only
+tourists unaccustomed to tall buildings did so. He'd never thought about
+it until he'd heard the social injunction against such a thing; it was
+now one of the things he thought about almost every day as he rode to
+and from work in gritty blue buses.
+
+Inside the building, the constant sound of recirculating dry air made
+Larry feel as though he were at some beach in hell, listening to the
+ocean, or more accurately at a gift shop in a landlocked state in hell
+listening to the ocean as represented by the sound a conch shell makes
+when he holds it up to his ear. The buzz of the fluorescent bulbs
+overhead sounded like the hot sun bearing down all day in this metaphor,
+a favorite of Larry's.
+
+His cubicle was made of that cheap, grayish-blue plywood that cubicles
+are made of; inside it, his computer sat on his desk as Larry liked to
+think an eagle perched on a mountainous crag much like the crag that was
+his desktop wallpaper. The walls were unadorned except for a few
+tacked-up papers in report covers explaining his script. When Larry made
+a call to a potential customer it always went the same way:
+
+"Hi, Mr/Mrs (customer's name). My name is Larry and I'm with (client's
+name), and was just wondering if I could have a minute of your time?"
+
+"Oh, no, sir; I don't want whatever it is you're selling." (customer
+terminates call).
+
+Larry had only ever read the first line of the script on the wall.
+Sometimes he had an urge to read more of it, to be ready when a customer
+expressed interest in whatever it was Larry was selling, but something
+in him---he liked to think it was an actor's intuition that told him it
+was best to improvise, though he worried it was the futility of it---kept
+him from reading further into the script. So when Jane said, "Sure, I
+have nothing better to do," he was thrown completely off guard.
+
+"Um, alright Mrs…Mrs. Loring, I was wondering---"
+
+"It's Ms, not Mrs. em ess. Miz. No ‘r,' Larry." She sounded patient, as
+if she were used to correcting people about the particulars of her
+title. But how often can that happen? Larry thought, and he was suddenly
+deeply confused.
+
+"Oh, sorry, ma'am, uh, Miz Loring, but I wanted to know whether you'd
+like to, ah, buy some…" Larry put his head in his hand and started
+twirling his hair in his finger, a nervous habit he'd had since
+childhood, and closed his eyes tightly. "Why don't you have anything
+better to do?"
+
+Immediately he knew it was the wrong question. Even before the silence
+on the other end moved past impatience and into stunned, Larry had a
+mini-drama written and staged within his mind: she would call customer
+service and complain loudly into the representative's ear. The rep would
+send a memo to the head of telemarketing requesting disciplinary action,
+and the head would delegate the action to Larry's immediate supervisor,
+David. David would saunter over to Larry's cubicle sometime within the
+next week, depending on when he got the memo and when he felt like
+crossing fifty feet of office space, and have one of what David liked to
+call "chats" but what Larry knew were lectures. After about half an hour
+of "chatting" David would give Larry a warning and ask him to come in
+for overtime to make up for the discretion, and walk back slowly to his
+office, making small talk with the cubicled workers on the way. The
+world suddenly felt too small for Larry, or he too big for it.
+
+Quietly, with the same patience but with a bigger pain, Jane said, "My
+husband just left me and I thought you could take my mind off of him for
+just a minute," and hung up.
@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
+---
+title: 'We played those games too'
+project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
+...
+
+I saw two Eskimo girls playing a game \
+blowing on each other's' vocal chords to make music \
+on the tundra. I thought about how \
+once we played the same game \
+and the sounds blowing over the chords of our throats \
+was the same as a wind over frozen prairie. \
+We are the Eskimo girls who played \
+the game that night to keep ourselves warm. \
+I run my hands over my daughter's \
+voicebox as she hums a song \
+about a seal and about killing the seal and about \
+skinning it and rendering the blubber \
+into clear oil to light lamps. \
+I remember you are my lamp. She remembers \
+you although you left before she arrived. \
+I can never tell her about you. \
+I will never be able to express that taste of your oil \
+as we pushed our throats together. \
+I will never be able to say how \
+we share this blemish like conjoined twins. \
+I will fail you always to remember you.
@@ -0,0 +1,22 @@
+---
+title: 'To Daniel: an elaboration of a previous comment'
+project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
+...
+
+There are more modern ideals of beauty \
+than yours, young padowan. Jessica has \
+some assets, that I'll give you easily, \
+but in my women I prefer pizzazz.
+
+I don't want to bring you down, or make you think \
+that your perfected woman isn't so. \
+It's just that, like Adam said, 2006 \
+has come and gone. What did she do
+
+in that year anyway? IMDB \
+has, surprisingly, none, though in '05 \
+she's in four titles. Sin City \
+I've never seen, although from many I've
+
+heard it's good. But it's still irrelevant--- \
+no matter how comely, she lacks talent.
@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
+---
+title: 'Death's Trumpet'
+project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
+epigraph: 'So Death plays his little fucking trumpet. So what, says the boy.'
+epigraph-credit: 'Larry Levis'
+...
+
+He didn't have any polish so he spit-shined the whole thing, \
+top to bottom. It gleamed like maybe a tomato on the vine \
+begging to be picked and thrown on some caprese. Death loved caprese.
+
+He stood up and put the horn to his lips, imagining \
+it was a woman he loved. He blushed as he realized \
+it was a terrible metaphor. \
+He practiced for six hours a day---what else to do?
+
+Death looks at himself in the mirror as he plays. \
+The trumpet is suspended in midair. Damn vampire rules. \
+Death is always worried he might have missed a spot shaving \
+but he'll never know unless a stranger is polite enough. \
+Not that he ever goes out or meets anyone.
+
+He wakes up late these days. Stays in bed later. \
+He thinks he might be depressed. The caprese has gotten soggy \
+since he made it, maybe three days ago or maybe just two. \
+The sun streams through his kitchen blinds like smoke. \
+He decides to go to the arcade. When he gets there,
+
+there's only a little boy with dead eyes. So far so good. \
+He's playing a first-person shooter. Death walks past him \
+and watches out of the corner of his eye. The kid's good. \
+Death wants to congratulate him. His trumpet is in his hand.
@@ -0,0 +1,22 @@
+---
+title: 'Elegy for an alternate self'
+project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
+...
+
+Say there are no words. Say that we are conjoined \
+from birth, or better still, say we are myself. \
+---But I still talk to myself, I build my world \
+through language, so if we say there are no words \
+this is not enough. Say we are instead some animal, \
+or better yet, a plant, or a flagellum motoring \
+aimlessly around. (Say that humans are the only things \
+that reason. Say that we're the only things that worry.)
+
+Say that I am separate. To say there's everything else \
+and then there's me is wrong. Each thing is separate: \
+there is no whole in the world. Say this is both good \
+and bad, or rather, say there is no good or bad but only \
+being, more and more of it always added, none taken out \
+though it can be forgotten. Say that forgetting \
+is a function of our remembering. (Say that humans only \
+worry about separation. Say that only humans feel it.)
@@ -0,0 +1,68 @@
+---
+title: 'Statements'
+subtitle: 'a fragment'
+project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
+...
+
+I. Eli {#i.-eli .unnumbered}
+------
+
+"Can one truly describe an emotion?" Eli asked me over the
+walkie-talkie. He was in the bathroom, & had taken the walkie-talkie in
+with him absent-mindedly. I could hear sounds of his piss hitting the
+toilet water.
+
+"I can hear you peeing," I said. He didn't answer so I said in apology,
+"It's okay. Humans are sexually dimorphic." I was sitting on my blue
+baby blanket texting Jon, who was funny and amicable over the phone. He
+made a three-message joke about greedy lawyers and I would have been
+laughing if not for my embarrassment toward Eli. He finally came out of
+the bathroom and kept his eyes straight ahead, toward the wall calendar
+and not at me, as he passed through the family room into his bedroom,
+were he shut the door quietly. Presently I heard some muffled noise as
+he turned on his iPod. I guessed he didn't feel like talking so I stayed
+on my blanket watching the Price is Right and texting Jon.
+
+Drew Carrey was doing his wrap-up speech on TV when Eli finally came out
+of his room, red puffy streaks covering his face. His eyes and nose were
+red too, which was almost festive against the pale green and white of
+the wallpaper. I had been laughing at the goofy costumes on the Price is
+Right and the jokes Jon was texting me, but when Eli came out of the
+room I stopped and just looked at him as well as I could. He was staring
+at my right shoulder as he said, "Go home now."
+
+"What?"
+
+"I said go home now. I don't want you here anymore, because I just
+remembered I have someone coming over and I have to clean."
+
+"Look, Eli, I'm sorry---"
+
+"It doesn't have anything to do with you, I swear. Just go, okay? Go
+home now."
+
+I got up and tried to give him a hug but he withdrew from me sharply. So
+I walked around the coffee table as he sat down, not looking at me
+anymore, and stared at the blank TV. The blanket I had been sitting in
+was crumpled next to him like a dead bird. I opened my mouth but thought
+better of talking, and closed the door behind me slowly.
+
+II. Dimorphic {#ii.-dimorphic .unnumbered}
+-------------
+
+Oranges. Poison. A compromise
+between Mary & Judas. Blue
+baby blankets swaddling greedy lawyers.
+
+Can one truly describe an emotion?
+I cut my ankle with a razor blade.
+I can only go one at a time. Humanity
+has a seething mass of eels
+for a brain, mating in the water so forcefully
+that it could drown you under the moon.
+
+III. Declaration of Poetry {#iii.-declaration-of-poetry .unnumbered}
+--------------------------
+
+You have to go one line at a time, and you have to start on the first or
+second line.
@@ -0,0 +1,27 @@
+---
+title: 'Swansong'
+subtitle: 'alternate version'
+project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
+...
+
+This poem is dry like chapped lips. \
+It is hard as teeth---hear the tapping? \
+It is the swan song of beauty, as all \
+swan songs are. Reading it, you are \
+puzzled, perhaps a little repulsed. \
+Swans do not have teeth, nor do they sing. \
+A honking over the cliff is all \
+they can do, and that they do \
+badly. You don't know where I'm going. \
+You want to tell me, You are not you. \
+You are the air the swan walks on. \
+You are the fringe of the curtain \
+that separates me from you. I say \
+that you are no longer the temple, \
+that you have been through fire \
+and are now less than ash. You are \
+the subtraction of yourself from \
+the world, the air without a swan. \
+Together, we are each other. You \
+and I have both nothing and everything \
+at once, we own the world and nothing in it.
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html>
+<!-- Template for compiled 'Autocento' documents -->
+<html$if(lang)$ lang="$lang$"$endif$>
+<head>
+    <meta charset="utf-8">
+    <meta name="generator" content="pandoc">
+    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes">
+    <meta name="author" content="Case Duckworth">
+    <!-- more meta tags here -->
+    <title>$pagetitle$</title>
+    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="_poems.css">
+    $for(css)$
+        <link rel="stylesheet" href="$css$">
+    $endfor$
+    <!-- link to javascript? -->
+    <!--[if lt IE 9]>
+        <script src="http://html5shim.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"> </script>
+    <![endif]-->
+    $for(header-includes)$
+        $header-includes$
+    $endfor$
+</head>
+<body>
+    $for(include-before)$
+        $include-before$
+    $endfor$
+    $if(title)$
+    <header>
+        <h1 class="title">$title</h1>
+        $if(subtitle)$
+        <h1 class="subtitle">$subtitle$</h1>
+        $endif$
+    </header>
+    $endif$
+    $body$
+    $for(include-after)$
+        $include-after$
+    $endfor$
+</body>
+</html>
@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+# for windows only right now
+
+for file in *.txt; do # TODO: change this to work with globs & args & stuff
+    pandoc -f markdown \                 # all files are in pandoc's markdown
+           -t html5 \                    # they're being outputted to html5
+           --template=_template.html \   # use this file as a template
+           --smart \                     # smart quotes, etc.
+           $file \
+           -o "${file%.txt}.html"
+done