Two young men greeted a new crew member on a ship’s quarterdeck 60 years ago and, in a matter of weeks, by simple challenge, introduced this then 18 year-old who’d never really read a book through to the lives that can be found in them.… —Thank you Anthony Gaeta and Edmund Budde for your life-altering input.…

Socrates said to Glaucon,”The things we think we know are like shadows cast by a  distant light on the walls of a cave  of things unseen we do not know.” The Thin Skin of Our Conceits —For L. who couldn’t find the balloon she’d saved in remembrance of a cousin of her childhood You called last night…

“Time is a static in the mind.”—Malachi Black, poet Timesea In the days when there were bona fide summers when months were loyal to the expected, when they stayed more or less within their lanes, December not copping the joys of July, for instance, when seasons honored tradition and did not insist on mukluks in…

Gull on a Spar I’m a gull on a spar —so much sea, so little far this perch is so unsteady I wonder what my bearings are the roll and sway and pitch, the other gull-calls I am hearing as ship slides into ditch of trough, this captain must be drunk the way he’s steering…

Authoritarian if hubris were astronomical it would appear as a black hole at the center of its galaxy in tie and suit which would not be seen, but whose influence, its dragging presence, would be known by the stars around it that vanish into its maw —would not be seen because its mass’ draw would…

I look at my grandchildren and know that, being so young, they have little serious understaning of Covid and wonder what parts of it they’ll recall. Or will it linger…? How vague a memory will it be. What sort of meaning will it have, one like mine of world war? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Meaning of the…

On the Edge of a Joke on the tip of my tongue a funny thing is on edge an ambivalent thing I think, as if a comedian on a brink in a no-nonsense universe of serious laughs is set to sail or sink but all anticipation feels this way in the space before a punch line,…

Like The Old Harry ….. –for my father, Jim My father was an opaque poet of blue collar verse who’d sling odd terms from the corner of his mouth opposite the one holding the lip-gripped cigarette issuing curlicues of smoke which circled his cocked head his eyes squinting from their sting his playful gags filled earcups from which I, with…

“The writer [Lorca] died while mixing with the rebels, these are natural accidents of war . . .” —Spanish Dictator Francisco Franco. “The country has to toughen up … part of the problem …is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore, right?” — US president, Donald Trump Last Day of Federíco García Lorca Federico, in…

New Vinyl …. —an Elegy to take an album in your hands, to feel its slight heft, to unsheathe it from clear synthetic skin, to slip it from its cardboard cover, to scan its art, to flip it over, read, then draw it from its inner sleeve with care (platter’s rim to palm just so)…

Galleon the complexity of your crossed purposes beauty and war, grace and wastefulness, you rest solidly at sea upon a liquid without yet dropping through, a steel log with algorithmic spurs hollow inside of rust and rot, a contradiction, weighty, weightless, floating divine swan human pawns Jesus weeps Mars is gloating . Jim Culleny 2/15/20…

Begin flames are the feathers of this bird but I’m not calling the fire brigade —life burns life this is a particular bird whose flame is multitudinous red with flamboyant nuance: high-frequency colorwheels thrown in and well-played purple notes of a bass line in its wings —but “multitudinous” fails to tell the tale of this…

Banks along a river its banks are set and keep the river in the river being in the river the river’s in its being within its banks, whole, astatic, a river flows unbound, ecstatic a falling river goes within these banks, astatic, this river grows unbound, ecstatic this falling river flows until, without banks, this…

Two young men greeted a new crew member on a ship’s quarterdeck almost 60 years ago to the day and, in a matter of weeks, by simple challenge, introduced this then 18 year-old who’d never really read a book through, to the lives that can be found in them.  —Thank you A. Gaeta and E. Budde…

As If About a Painting . takes many steps to top this mountain as if Olympus a prickly pine’s upon one nub as if Zeus pagoda   house   shed as if Many Mansions sky  sun red  some blue as if Noon some on steps are climbing as if To move calligraphy top right as if A thought balloon each…

If you talk about it, it’s not Tao If you name it, it’s something else What can’t be named is eternal Naming splits the eternal to smithereens …………………………… —Lao Tzu, 6th Century BC Lao Tzu’s Lament at first I think, I’ve got it! then I think, Ah no, that’s not it I think, it’s more…

Darkroom, 6:44 AM . sun’s not up but imminent, trees in the window are emerging shades in a darkroom bath three boys sleep in a room downstairs near mother; in another a girl sleeps with another mother— all still new as if just born on this darkroom raft I look up again, sun trumps umbra…

High and Blue Enough plums on limb tips across a grassy slice of space have just begun to taste the sunny juice that tips the scale of day —a star that sprays its golden light across turning leaves above our arbor vitae emeralds, brushy backboned sentinels twenty feet tall we planted there when they were…

by Jim Culleny I’ve done a number of things to make a living over the years, but my most protracted make-a-living venture has been as a carpenter. But I’ve not done that alone: without the right tools a carpenter’s as helpless as a musician without an axe. Tools are body’s extension, and mind’s.  Which brings…

“What the earliest scriptural-literary texts . . . do is attempt to find a language to come to terms with . . . the contingency of being.” —Amit Chaudhuri, from Storytelling & Forgetfullness A Skeptic’s Critique of Storytelling what is a story anyway but a trip through landscapes inhabited by characters bent by other characters…