Underwood. Undermountain. Mr. Undertree. Mr. Underworld. Underfish, undersmoke, under the weather. This is a cloud. This is a tornado.

This is an ancient cache of figs. This is early agriculture. This is unclothed. This is pristine.

This is what for. I will give you what for. What for?

This morning I listened to stories about the golden carp. And stories about stories. And resistance to the fact of stories. And the sources of stories. Beyond. All I can tell you.

You enters shyly. You has been driven away, off the mountain path. You has flown over the cliff in a blaze of herbal fire and lifting smoke. I feel your cloud on my arms. I feel cold leaching down my arms. I feel devils on my arms, in my hands. I feel dust coming up, dust and ash, clouds of smoke from the charnel grounds.

Her laughter—can’t kill herself because her son would then have to kill himself. I listen and might be tempted to be afraid, temptation to be afraid, mentally ill like everyone one. Everyone one.

So here we go—

And speaking from a higher place, the upper yard needs mowing, shaggy grass. And speaking from a higher place, the ridgelines in my neighborhood are now obscured by mist, there are no mountains, just the thinnest veil of red.
I like the redness of the buds, I like to climb. I hear a new accumulation of rain, some vigorous hissing in the street. The phone rings. The cell phone rings. I turned off the TV. And now the last bit left, the buzzing, stops.

Fast talkers. At work, an impulse, so intense, to slow down all conversations. Slow slow slow slow down. Make you repeat each word in line so the thoughts can be absorbed. So what is this phenomenon, this riffing disrespect? Does it hide ignorance or escalate frustration? Where is the mountain, where are the waters?

Egg looking for the riverbank. Eggplant seeking streamside.

Soft—softness of her terms. The soundness of her structure. Building system like a structure of spun sugar, stained with drops of food coloring. Where do you want to work? On the page, on the screen? at some point, I let go of all that effort. That did fall away like husks. I envy Mister You, at his desk just prior to dawn, staring out the window at the frozen lawn, no meadow. Cardinals and bluebirds. Resistant to maternal comments, on the —Robins or the —Peepers. Like a metronome each spring drawing your attention. And yet I have to trace my way through boredom, I have to throw my mind a bone to chew on and make Money. It’s awfully hard to retain my concentration on this thin high music as though here I was up in the mountains in my hut.

If I could find my way to a simpler conception. If I could find my way to the egg on the pedestal, if I could find my way to the walking rock. No table salt. No laughing pepper. No funny farm. No moldy vegetables. Rot in a garden. Where do we see that rot, the heavy mosses, the packed earth of the path? The beaten borders, crumbling boundaries? The edge trees fallen into the river, bouncing, bouncing, bouncing, in a death flirtation with the current. Where do we see that? Where do we see the planes? How far away are they? The red light blinks far away at night and there you are, another person. We forget that all of these poets are also persons, one after the other, exhibiting bodily functions. Yes you are a wizard of language. Yes you may set a bonfire. Yes you can turn and turn and turn. No you are not a clergy person. No none of this should be bandied about. No you are not for sale. No you have no memory of the mountain of marzipan you saw in Italy.

I am tremendously interested in going into the mountains. The place where I will sit down to dinner with Arabs, my combed hair glistening. The charred fox on the platter, mistaken for dog, shot through the heart. The chorus of cousins solemnly uninvited, but still in attendance. The rugged rapscallions, the host with his lions, the pair eating onions, the service of truncheons. The bat is a velvet mask.

I wrote so much no one would want to pick up one of my notebooks and wade into that.

Writing—sort of below par—under the surface. Aimless.
Writing without the mountains.

The foxes coughing in the mountains. The evil fox light. Lost lore of animals lost lore of fears. Our superstitions are gone now, transformed into bombers from the air. Our strange fear of foxes or wolves following, met with turbans and robes. We do not learn much about any of this, we don’t push through it. We just take it as it lays.