Before I went to the lake I started watching An American Returns to Palestine to Defend His Home from Settlers, on Infinite Jaz. At the Point I spoke to a guy who said there's no community, nothing we can do, when I talked about the data centers, and I said but there IS community, and we can at least have solidarity, but he said Just Eat and Drink, like, for tomorrow we die. Then I went home and finished watching the podcast. The settlers in the West Bank can come and take Palestinian homes and there's nothing the Palestinians can do, except to bear witness, have solidarity, and sumud.  The fellow interviewed was trying to save his home surrounded by the IDF and settlers. He could not leave the house. He's a Palestinian American. The Palestinians are just beaten and thrown out, if not killed. The IDF comes to assist the settlers. They say yes, Americans can come and claim any Palestinian home they wish. Unless you are Palestinian American. We're not here to simply consume. We're here to be humans in community with all beings.

 you may not recall your dreams but they are as real as you or me. and keep in mind a poem is neither too long nor too short. at the end of the poem i say, honestly it takes your breath away, and then you breathe deeper. i'm glad that poem was long and left me wanting more.

(Hayden Carruth, The First Day of Her Death)

as a kid i wanted and knew I would never lead a normal life nor even know what a normal life means.

tern, but it would not be born. And ye

it's a long poem by hayden carruth writing in a remote place about his dead daughter and his isolation and his Anxiety psychoneurosis /(Chronic and acute) / Complicated by / Generalized phobic /Extensions and alcoholism,” and told he would “never again live a normal life.

tern for term and ye for yet, typos halt one in the walk of a long poem. make me think of a poem composed of typos, thinking of typos as normal, normal as it happens to be.

anyway strangely i guess maybe i had titled the picture of lulu a normal life before i read his poem with halting typos and now i haven't finished it. i could have written a short poem in this time i suppose.

and i think now, as i read a line about the lights going out, about the people in gary, indiana, powerless, in the merciless power grid dark.

and suddenly i think of the hummingbird that died trying to fly to the japanese plum trees outside the window by my bed, dead in my pillow, a droplet on its bill glistening, i put in a in a jar on a rafter on the porch above the front door. and i wonder how long it stayed there. is it still there?

now i have strayed far from the start, and i will go back again and begin.

oh my, the poem goes on! i have to do the laundry! yes, from a poet blocked for years! talking to virtually no one! passionately!

And like all elegiac words, these swirl

around the question forever unanswered: “What for? What

       is it all for?”

thanks to eva h.d. and hayden carruth (i still haven't finished the poem).

 I know you, you used to say things just happen to you, and then you die, but you know, I know you know, things also happen for you.

 I say another day in dystopia, she says another day in paradise. Day by day we're here, together in a structure in the sky, looking down, looking out our windows, in our minds, weightless, watching birds, like flying, then grounding, balancing on the fire escape, in the sky, in the room, above, below, in mind. 

 Olive climbs over my book, around my laptop, to reach me. She's always reaching out for me. I'm always reaching out, but I'm in sometime space. She comes and looks into my eyes — I'm here, I came from outside to live inside with you, I found you when you found me, right? So you know, you're also here. If you feel vacant sometime, I will keep reminding you.