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Dark. Like Snow.
a performance poem
Ren Powell
(Stavanger, Norway)
"Then everything got dark. Real dark, you know? Like snow."
"Then everything got dark. Real dark, you know? Like snow."
"Then everything got dark. Real dark, you know? Like snow."
"Real dark, you know?"
Dark, you know?
Dark. Like snow.
And we tried to make sense of it.
We wrote the word a hundred times until it was no longer a word. We wrote each letter a thousand times, until it was no longer letters. Until it was powder floating over the green chalkboard. Until it was indigo squares grouped into shapes on powdery, beige paper.
Until it was diluted into the electric dichotomy of on and off, of zero and one, of yes and no, of right and wrong, of left and right, of cats and dogs, of boys and girls, of time and space, of bacon and eggs, of tennis and ocean, of fairies and blisters, of cartwheels and tadpoles, of luggage and sunflowers, of asbestos and Jesus Christ.
Until it was disconnected from any body. But it couldn't be undone.
John wrote: In the beginning was the word.…
The swelling from the solar plexus that flooded the groin, that burned the muscles between each rib, that spilled into the cavity of the mouth, that pushed the soft palate; the word that turned the body inside out.
The word congealed into language.
"Then everything got dark. Real dark, you know? Like snow."
And Gina types her cynical letters, these symbols so unlike the archaic characters of human shape: She watches a bearded man who is waving the American flag on the corner outside her office window in Lexington, Kentucky in the early afternoon of September 11th, in the year 2001.
She thinks he's probably a Vietnam vet. She sends me an email. She thinks it's "weird" that the sight of him brings her to tears. She types out that the day is weird. I stare at the computer screen until I know, really know, that each pixel is identical. Uniformly weird.
Hô Xuân Hu'o'ng, a courtesan, wrote poems with dancing words. In the year 1819, in the Vietnamese province of Bác Ninh, she painted the Nôm characters with her sinews, the words bleeding, wrestling and copulating on the page.
The translator writes, that out of Vietnam's seventy-six million inhabitants only about 24 can read her poems as they were written.
And nobody bothers to learn language for the sake of a few poems. For the sake of a double entendre.
"Then everything got dark. Real dark, you know? Like snow."
We go numb under the pressure, the impulse. Knowing that even if we could find the exact word, the precise word, even if everyone pulled out their dictionaries and we all agreed on the language, the dialect, the nuance, the connotation, the denotation, we know that when we say the word out loud we lose that part of ourselves. It becomes the word. We relinquish the truth and find ourselves disconnected from the body, from the protons and neurons and kidneys and fear. Like God, our bellies emptied, our losses multiplied. Our conscience soothed in isolation.
But we can't help ourselves. From the moment we let that first truth escape from our toothless mouths we are stretched thin, worn long from the reaching—sending prophets one after the other in desperate chase—words that divide like cancer as they leave our mouths and pile themselves into the pathetic lines of willful poets.
Tom says that the financial district is "like a war zone."
And when it is war,
It's like Hell.
And Hell is like fire…
Or like snow—Not that anyone knows for sure.
Hell. I'm old enough to say that word now. I used to say "H - E - double toothpick." We can argue as to whether it meant the same thing, or if the difference matters: if my red is your red, if my terror is your terror, if the contents of our nightmares matter so long as we know we both have them.
So long as we know we both sweat.
But this conversation is boring if we aren't stoned.
On the 14th of September, in the year 2001, Billy Graham's prayer is being forwarded by email and Sophia writes to tell me that a homeless woman asked her why she was crying. "New York and D.C. are so far from Seattle."
The homeless woman asks Sophia whether it will be bean soup or chicken for dinner. And Sophia wonders why she feels a pang of envy.
Empathy and luxury don't really rhyme.
That wasn't what I meant to say.
Condolence. Noun.
Sympathy with a person who has experienced pain, grief or misfortune: paid a visit of condolence to the grieving family. See Synonyms at pity.
Pity.
Sympathy and sorrow aroused by the misfortune or suffering of another. A matter of regret: It's a pity she can't attend the reception.
"Then everything got dark. Real dark, you know? Like snow."
The reporter asks the Prime Minister, "Blir det krig?"
The reporter asks the Foreign Minister, "Blir det krig?"
The reporter asks the General, "Blir det krig?"
The reporter asks the Professor, "Blir det krig?"
The reporter asks the Man on the Street, "Blir det krig?"
OM SHANTI, SHANTI, SHANTI, OM SHANTI, SHANTI, SHANTI,
OM SHANTI, SHANTI, SHANTI, OM SHANTI, SHANTI, SHANTI,
OM SHANTI, SHANTI, SHANTI
But that sure as Hell isn't what the Norwegian reporter wants to hear.
He just wants to ask the question: "Is this war?"
"Then everything got dark. Real dark, you know? Like snow."
On September 15th, 2001 I get an email that asks me to stand outside my house and light a candle at 1900 hours Central/Mountain Time. On September 17th, I get another email asking me to do it again.
Someone wants to take a satellite picture.
A matter of regret: It's a pity she can't attend the reception.
"Then everything got dark. Real dark, you know? Like snow."
Betty sings her baby to sleep with words that no longer have anything to do with trees and cradles and wind. Elementary school children are fed skeletons in the shape of ten-letter words. They've got their hands on their hearts.
The President reads the teleprompter and lifts his soft palate and rounds his lips, thickens his tongue and exhales.
Just last year I learned to spell Afghanistan. To describe the place where women are wrapped in embroidered blue like aborted butterflies. Where women are stoned for their infidelities.
Once we learn a word it becomes indispensable.
That wasn't what I meant to say.
It takes on a life of its own. It turns on us.
It becomes inevitable,
Inevitable and evitable. Amen.
David tells me he's put a flag on his car. He's become a patriot. He doesn't even get stoned these days. And last time he was in Manhattan, he told the reporter that when the first tower fell, everything got dark. Like snow.
~ . ~
Buildings 1 and 2
Jay Chollick
When time and gleaming
buildings stood intact—and I
with them—
I'd look, ground level all around
and minus seagulls
it was ocean that it seemed—
not really, but the air felt vast;
and held
inside itself a great
and thrilling armature, two
numbers, how the sky poured in;
and then, past birds a solid silver hubris
double-blazed!
So heaven, much more than
water
was suspended there
But I don't mean
its angelic pap—that silver,
sliding up the dizzy
bays turned commerce strange—
quixotic—its burnish
polished to an archangelic
sheen! Oh no, far from it
Inside the gorgeous skin, these
buildings ticked or roared;
gabbled commonplace;
spoke pushbutton lunatic smoothly
to a palm; went
raging robot up or down the
smarmy charts
went zooming somewhere…
Inside of them, these buildings,
the usual venality; mess;
and everywhere
the bitter beauty of its juice,
the simple gimme-money
with a grubby laugh—
and who said cold billions have no flame,
oh life, here was the
overwhelming maelstrom—
but something something made it
sweet
Then
Terrible
~ . ~
The Denial of Architecture
Joel Allegretti
It was like —
No. It was not like that.
Then it was akin to —
No. It was not that either.
It must have been like —
No.
It was a reconstruction of contexts,
A realignment of the connotations
Around terms like
Steel
Glass
Tower
Faith
Valor
It was the irony in the churchyard:
Gravestones,
Their angles smoothed by the centuries,
Remaining upright
Under the metallic crumble.
No. It was none of that.
It was this:
The thing
No thing
Nothing.
~ . ~
911 Shooting Star
Stella Padnos
A woman throws her body from the lit building.
She is a shooting star.
She is fear melted by fire.
Stellar cinders in a violent shower.
Twelve months later she is still hot.
She is still burning.
The earth's memory of her
is on my windowsill,
fine grime turned to small stones.
The smell of burning through my hair.
I measure my breath, careful
not to inhale her lungs.
Travelers arrive to breathe her in.
We collided with the world.
A new universe emerged from the smashing.
~ . ~
This Earth Place
Laura Sherwood Rudish
The people in the rubble
Are all dead now
It's the rest of us who are
In fragments
Broken and burned
Fallen
Still
Something gleams
From a sunflower's center
Infinite
Star upon star
With wounds and
Tears everywhere
Water, candles, gas masks, gold?
How
The spirit desecrates
What we try to make whole
~ . ~
The Embrace
Sophie Cabot Black
when the man cannot love earth
any longer he is also deciding
to leave, when the man believes
we can no longer hold him
up into the light, when the man
decides he is finished with the harm
done to him and those he watches over
when the man finds I am necessary
face to face, when the man concludes
that through me he will get there,
when he puts himself altogether close
with his plan of salvation,
when the man needs to go beyond
my body with his body, to take it
all apart with the slightest turn
of head, finger, a drawing back
of the lip, whatever was true before
now collapsing on itself until
I too bring nothing home
except what refuses to burn and the smell
of forgiveness on the breath
[Home]
Point of Honor |
Disrepair |
Distance |
Order |
Point Resumed
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Point-Blank