Ghost Buffalo

. Words David Foster Wallace Circled in the Dictionary: abulia benthos cete distichous exergue fraktur jacal kohl legatee ort peccant quinate rebus suint talion valgus witenagemot http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/press/releases/2010/dfw/dictionary/

Who was it turned my thought to this ? Wind. Stone. Limb. Gate. Issa. Yeats. Em. Blake. -

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. -Plato

Last night we had a good fifteen minutes or so of joy holding ... a poem on the tips of our thumbnails. - R Nemo Hill A Love Song -- For Nemo and Julian May we follow in our ignorance and wakenings and little mammal howlings, incidental perfect pitch, our own erratic foot prints, the teeming sea, the sailing boy, and fifteen thousand moons for every minute of every joy.

We were strolling along the street, and passed a couple of sleepy undergraduates. Suddenly my companion interjected -- so then I shot him in the face -- terrible fucking mess, brains all up the walls ... for no reason other than to bring a little color into the lives of his eavesdroppers. He then resumed our conversation on Sondheim.

All true poems are fugitive, being embarrassed by their human source.

The other day I saw in the garden the first bright green crocus pushing the winter aside, unabashed in its gladness. Not being a post-podern thing, the crocus has no use for irony, no love of grumbling. Said the poet from Nepal, ‘everybody I meet in America has a car and a job and a big television, and they all say they are broke'. By the lake, one dead frog, (mid leap ?) one early bumble bee, a noisy clan of Canada geese, a constellation of starlings. At the Socrates gathering this month, the subject was Power. Around the circle: a Wiccan, a Christian, a Buddhist, a couple of Neitzscheans, a brilliant comic stoic, an astrophysicist, an English teacher, a metaphysician, and a plumber. He had the question hushed us all, until we answered, answered, answered.

I ran into Isosceles. He had a great idea for a new triangle ... Woody Allen

Wouldn't it be wonderful to start our children's spiritual education at the age of six with the honest opener: Children -- I'm afraid no one has the first clue why we're here. Don Paterson

Each year more people visit zoos than attend all sporting events combined.

Spring begins and who could deny hocus pocus, pink sky, ice floe, wild crocus ...

Not all those who pass before the Great Mother's Chair get past with only a stare. Some she looks at their hands to see what kind of savages they were.

One of the nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating. - Pavarotti

I dream of a culture where it is thought a crime to be dull. - Roethke

Coyote, We hardly know you. Which, like coyote nose, is the point of all coyote glory and holy revelation. In our backyard coyote ignores the steady, pale climb of the moon. Old hat. Done that. Instead he picks his fights with Thor, the god who dares wrangle back, bringing Coyote, minor god, ferocious little deity, a scrap of coyote dignity, and several existential moans closer to home. (first appeared in Smartish Pace)

To conceive an idea is novel, to execute it servile. - Da Vinci

In my craft or sullen art Exercised in the still night When only the moon rages And the lovers lie abed With all their griefs in their arms, I labor by singing light Not for ambition or bread Or the strut and trade of charms On the ivory stages But for the common wages Of their most secret heart. Not for the proud man apart From the raging moon I write On these spindrift pages Nor for the towering dead With their nightingales and psalms But for the lovers, their arms Round the griefs of the ages, Who pay no praise or wages Nor heed my craft or art. Dylan Thomas.

The Optic Nerve On Lori's porch are desert ferns, a bowl of golden clementines, two broken urns, an overturned terra cotta pot, a cot, an overflowing litter box, a fallen chime, assorted pairs of winter boots and flip flops, a cluster of shattered light bulbs, some broken phones, a bread machine, a rusty stove, some metal pipe, a leaning stack of magazines, a couple gutted box springs, and just beyond the climbing vine, the neighbors’ effing clothesline. (first published in Unsplendid)