He was born on a few separate occasions green traffic lights at night Autocento of the breakfast table is a hypertextual exploration of the workings of revision across time. Case Duckworth is the cowardly but lovable Great Dane who solves mysteries on TV. Autocento of the breakfast table is my Master’s thesis, an inter/hypertextual exploration of the workings of inspiration, revision, and obsession. Lost things have a way of staying lost. And you were there at the start of it all Abraham, Abraham, you are old and cannot hear: So it’s the fucking moon. Big deal. As if What is poetry? Paul was writing in his diary about art. Paul took his axe and went out into the woods to chop trees. After searching for days or even months Now the ticking clocks scare me. When he said Bible I heard his southern accent _ART and CRAFT are only the inside and outside of the same building. Like 40 as I challenge anyone to come too! He woke up after eleven and didn’t go outside all day, not even to his Writing Shack. Man of autumn, cold wind, tr has been a part of the Unix toolset since the late 70s. So two hyperintelligent pandimensional beings The dead man finds his way into our hearts When I think of death I think He didn’t have any polish so he spit-shined the whole thing I turned off the TV as soon as the end credits began. It had gotten cold. YOU CANNOT DISCOVER ART ART MUST BE CREATED he sat on the couch at home while his mother watched TV and smoked. Say there are no words. Say that we are conjoined I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. Bottom of the drink: they had I didn’t write this sestina yesterday. “Is man the natural thing that makes unnatural things” he thought to himself as he looked out the kitchen window at the shed. You never can tell just when Charlie Sheen will enter your life. Tonight, as I look up, the stars His mother ran out of the house in her nightgown. Look, I say—look here— He looked down at his hands idly while he was typing. You think building Hoggle’s a hard game? His mother drove him to the Hardware Store on a Tuesday. I was away on vacation when I heard— This book is an exploration of life, of all possible lives that could be lived. It’s all jokes Paul wrote in what he was now calling his Hymnal. I am a great pillar of white smoke. I thought I saw you walking I want to say I take it all back I wanted to tell you something in order to I hear the rats run There is a theory which states the Universe January. He wrote JOKES on the top of a page in his notebook. Walter rides the bus into work on Wednesday morning when he realizes, with the force and surprise of a rogue current, that he is in the home-for-death phase of life. What secrets does it hold? Dimly remembered celebrity chefs shuffle Memory works strangely, spooling its thread He shrugged the wood off his shoulder, letting it fall with a clog onto the earth floor of his Writing Shack. His first chair was a stool. The definition of happiness is doing stuff that you really like. If you swallow hard enough God is love, they say, but there is Walking along in the dark is a good way to begin a song. THIS MAN REFUSED TO OPEN HIS EYES What is a poem? The moon is drowning the stars it pushes them The moon is gone and in its place a mirror. The other side of this mountain A dog moving sideways is sick; a man moving sideways is drunk. Silence lies underneath us all in the same way While swimming in the river Paul began typing on notecards. Nothing is ever over; nothing How does one describe a poem? Whenever you call me friend I think that I could write formal poems What did he do when he was in the woods? He said at the beginning, “It’s like rolling yarn into a too-small ball. CONTENTS OF THE SHED “My anger is like a peach,” he said. Importance is important. “Hello Paul this is Jill Jill Noe remember me” the voice on the phone was a woman’s. EVERYTHING CHANGES OR EVERYTHING I need a plant. I need a thing I’m writing this now because I have to. Of course, there is a God. The problem with people is this: we cannot be happy. Autocento of the breakfast table is an inter/hypertextual exploration of the workings of inspiration, revision, and obsession. Nothing matters; everything is sacred. When he finally got back to work he was surprised they threw him a party. Okay, so as we said in the Prelude, there either is or isn’t a God. “Do you have to say your thoughts out loud for them to mean anything” Paul asked Jill on his first coffee break at work. Sometimes I feel as though I am not a real writer. “Paul, you can’t turn in your reports on four-by-six notecards” Jill told him after he handed her his reports, typed carefully on twelve four-by-six notecards. Inside of my memory, the poem is another memory. When Ronald McDonald takes off his striped shirt, I lost my hands & knit replacement ones He chopped down a sapling pine tree and looked at his watch. On your desk I set a tangerine: I only write poems on the bus anymore. The self is a serengeti “What do you do all day in that shed out back” his mother asked one night while they ate dinner in front of the TV. He builds a ship as if it were the last thing If Justin Bieber isn’t going for the sixteenth I don’t care if they burn he wrote on his last blank notecard. in mammals the ratio between bladder size My body is attached to your body by a thin spittle of thought. He is so full in himself: “Riding the bus to work is a good way to think or to read” Paul thought to himself on the bus ride to work. “Can one truly describe an emotion?” Eli asked me over the walkie-talkie. It was a gamble He walked into the woods for the first time in months. This poem is dry like chapped lips. Swans fly overhead singing goodbye EVERYTHING CHANGES OR EVERYTHING STAYS THE SAME 4. The look she gave me 4. Half-hours in heaven are three times _Apparently typewriters need ribbon. It was one of those nameless gray buildings that could be seen from the street only if Larry craned his neck to almost vertical. My head is full of fire, my tongue swollen, Waiting for a reading to start We found your shirt deep in the dark water, I wish I’d kissed you when I had the chance. There are more modern ideals of beauty Paul only did his reading on the toilet. He couldn’t find a shirt to go to work in. TREATISE ON LITERATURE AS “SPOOKY He dropped the penny in the dryer, turned it on, and turned around. I can walk through the rain, that rare occurrence He didn’t go back into the shed for a long time. I saw two Eskimo girls playing a game There is a cave just outside of Flagstaff made from ancient lava flows. Your casserole dish takes the longest: HYMN 386: JOKES Somewhere I remember reading advice for beginning writers not to show their work to anyone, at least that in the early stages. “How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, / and frightening that it does not quite,” Jack Gilbert opens his poem “The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart.” The radio is screaming the man He sat down at his writing desk and removed his new pen from its plastic wrapping. While chopping a tree in the woods with his hatchet (a Christmas gift from his mother) a bird he’d never heard before cried out. He would enter data at work for fifty minutes and then go on break.