Day 48: Santa Cruz Poetry Santa Cruz **** We rode all night from Los Angeles, woke up to egrets, sea otters, hawks and finally 50 high school marching bands on the streets of Santa Cruz (the place poet Peter Gizzi lovingly calls &;the Deep End&;) where a peculiar kind of exhaustion took over. We scattered throughout the city, some kayaking, some swimming in the ocean and some sleeping until time came to head up to High Street where the readings happened. A deep wooly exhaustion through which I can move and dimly perceive but most definitely not be &;present&; which is what we all aspire to be. So, I leave the representation of the reading to Beth Pittinger, who put together this cento from lines at the reading. Thank you, Dennis Morton. Cento—On the Bus lost in a forest of pronouns the non-light of realism a single answer to a complex question I rub the grains of the moon in my hands when you light my cigarette just that way I am smoke this is what my lips are for replacing all the words I was born in January or maybe it was July the signs that said yield the uncreated still from the periphery of another world what if your imagination went on vacation too I couldn’t account for my hand which had turned into starfish a season arrives with its odd luggage the gravity of each word a loneliness about the shoulders seen as storied the practice is to unwind the song slowly sound has its own horizon long enough to plant an argument that face driven along some high wire without a net that would be like little candles having feeling for the wax the events are so far from each other we are zones we became breathless and called it busy they have bodies that’s all the faith they need I’d like to reduce everything to one syllable face your face cranium plant not the color green it’s black these fish do swim in partial language and putting LSD in swimming pools except some things under this seat let it be the one who inhales the drunken dream of a woman crescendo denotes climax like a fist out of a water the better of two futures it is where the gap is you’re full of magic holes concentrate seriously on the pathways of insects except to speak for the missing in the shadow of a great mistake the sensation of space where it had been once dense and full I must have felt the vagrant quotations I will write for the chill of it can the corporate highway be replaced by a rainbow you were my first ticket to pain how so clear whereas before invisible between the sky all alphabets are manual an absence spliced a veined hand waving to erect a huge disk over are the days of background windows is some thing a matter with you averages predict distant moments from the past four lines of chopped resonance not the knowledge of smallness and who on earth am I telling this to 095.jpg

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October 24th, 2006

Day 47: Los Angeles Day 49: San Francisco