the surface || mind (poems +++) poet jorie graham

READ friendly fire

(excerpt) I had wanted to compose words to speak of this war, but it is unspeakable. 

One of its most frightening aspects, it seems to me, is the degree to which language is being asked to keep it unspeakable. The degree to which language is being asked to collaborate and make it possible. 

We have been witnessing the erosion of language in our culture for some time now -language having become primarily a means for sales -of desires, emotions, ideas, identities. The automatic reflex for most of us any longer is to try to go underneath it, underneath the actual words, to find out "what is really going on." 

Think of it: not through language, but underneath it. Not via our words, but in spite of them. 

When a language is used against the truth, something terrible begins to happen to its people. 

These days civilian casualties are "collateral." To bomb something is to "visit" it. And "revisit" it. Something built by human hands and ingenuity, perhaps inhabited by human dream, hit by a bomb and obliterated is "acquired." Once bombed it is an "asset." To bomb something with beneficial consequences is to have it "pay divi­dends." 

To kill is to "neutralize" or to "take out." 

We are used to these kinds of euphemisms -this casual censorship. And it has become second nature for us to simply try to sever the word from its meaning in order to "hear" what is being said. As in, "oh, yes, by collateral we mean people, like us, hiding in their basements, trying to comfort and feed their terrified children." 

But that gets exhausting. After a while it's easier to use the short -cut term. The lie. After a while it's better not to think about it at all because we can't really, given these instruments. 

After a while our language becomes languages -one to each mind. The subjectivity becomes absolute. After a while there is no apprehensible text, there, underneath the interpretation. We are alone, each. Or, worse yet, it doesn't really exist because I can't really know it. Whatever we mean by really or know. This leads to a place where not only are we protected from what seems to be now the horror of deep feeling (as well as its joy) but, more frighteningly, where we are protected from our responsibilities -the simple responsibilities, the ferocious and clear ones, the ones we are not free without: do I have blood on my hands? for example. Or who is killing whom in my name? 

I think of Ted Berrigan’s cry of anguish -"I have articulated my moral impulses out of existence" -and am frightened by that darkest-yet use of language, the very wellspring being used to siphon its own spring dry. 

The mind grows overwhelmed, even the best mind. We become a nation of fact -gatherers instead of thinkers, of callers -in to talk shows instead of voters. A nation on Prozac dropping bombs, but only on TV, so you can switch it off. 

...I would like to close by reading two poems. It seems to me that perhaps the primary function of the creative use of language -in our age -is to try to constantly restore words to their meanings, to keep the living tissue of responsibility alive.  Word by word -as if they were cells. Elsewise, as Wallace Stevens says: 

It is a sound like any other. 

It will end. 

AT THE CABARET NOW 

The Americans are lonely. They don't know what happened.
They're still up and there's all this time yet to kill.
The musicians are still being paid so they keep on.
The sax pants up the ladder, up.
They want to be happy. They want to just let the notes
come on, the mortal wounds, it's all been
paid for so what the hell, each breath going up, up,
them thinking of course Will he make it How far can he
go? Skill, the prince of the kingdom, there at his table
now.
Is there some other master, also there, at a
back table, a regular, one we can't make out
but whom the headwaiter knows, the one who never
applauds?
So that it's not about the ending, you see, or where to go
from here.
It's about the breath and how it reaches the trumpeter's hands,
how the hands come so close to touching the breath,
and how the gold thing, gleaming, is there in between,
the only avenue -the long way -captivity.
Like this thing now, slow, extending the metaphor to make a
place. Pledge allegiance. By which is meant
see, here, what a variety tonight, what a good crowd,
some of them saying yes, yes, some others no,
don't they sound good together?
And all around this, space, and seedspores,
and the green continuance.
And all along the musicians still getting paid so let them.
And all around that the motionlessness -
don't think about it though, because you can't.
And then the mother who stayed at home of course because her
      body . . .
Farewell.
Farewell. 

This is the story of a small strict obedience.
Human blood.
And how it rivered into all its bloods.
Small stream, really, in the midst of the other ones.
In it children laughing and laughing which is the sound of
ripening.
Which the musicians can't play -but that is another
tale. Someone invited them in, humanity, and they came in.
They said they knew and then they knew.
They made this bank called justice and then this other one
called not.
They swam in the river although sometimes it was notes.
And some notes are true, even now, yes.
They knew each other, then winter came
which was a curtain, and then spring which was when they realized
it was a curtain.
Which leads us to this, the showstopper: summer, the Americans.
I wish I could tell you the story -so and so holding his glass up,
the table around him jittery,
and how then she came along gliding between the tables
whispering it exists -enough to drive them all mad of course­
whispering sharp as salt, whispering straw on fire looking at you­
The Americans whispering it cannot be, stay where you are.
And the one in the back no one knows starting up the applause,
alone, a flat sound like flesh beating flesh but only like it.
Tell me,
why did we live, lord?
Blood in a wind,
why were we meant to live? 

THE PHASE AFTER HISTORY 

1 

Then two juncos trapped in the house this morning.
  The house like a head with nothing inside.
The voice says: come in.
   The voice always whispering come in, come.
Stuck on its one track.
   As if there were only one track. 

Only one way in.
   Only one in.
The house like a head with nothing inside.
   A table in the white room.
Scissors on the table.
   Two juncos flying desperately around the
room of the house like a head
   (with nothing inside)
the voice -over keeping on (come in, in),
   them fizzing around the diagram that makes no

    sense -garden of upstairs and downstairs -wilderness
of materialized
    meaning.
Home.
   Like this piece of paper­
yes take this piece of paper -
    the map of the house like a head with
whatever inside -two birds - 

   and on it all my efforts to get the house out of their
way -
    to make detail withdraw its hot hand,
its competing naturalness -
    Then I open the two doors to make a draft
(here) -
   meaning by that an imbalance
   for them to find and ride -
The inaudible hiss -justice -washing through,
    the white sentence that comes alive to
rectify imbalance­
     -give me a minute.
In the meantime 

    they fly into the panes of glass: bright light,
silently they throw themselves into its law: bright light,
     they float past dreamed -up on the screen
called 7 a.m., nesting season, black blurry terms,
     the thwacking of their
heads onto resistant
      surfaces.
Then one escapes, 

sucked out by the doorful of sky,
      the insanity, elsewhere,
so that -give me a second­
      I no longer remember it,
and the other one vanishes though into here, upstairs,
      the voice still hissing under the track in in, 

the voice still hissing over the track.
      What you do now is wait
for the sound of wings to be heard
       somewhere in the house
-the peep as of glass bottles clinking,
       the lisp of a left -open book read by breeze,
or a hand going into the pile of dead leaves -

(as where there is no in, therefore)
        (as where -give me a minute -someone laughs upstairs
but it's really wings
       rustling up there
on the cold current called history
       which means of course it's late and I've
got things 

to do).
       How late is it: for instance, is this a sign?
Two birds then one: is it a meaning?
       I start with the attic, moving down.
Once I find it in the guest -
       bedroom but can't
catch it in time,
       talking to it all along, hissing: stay there, don't 

move -absolutely no
       story -sure there is a sound I could make with my throat
and its cupful of wind that could transmit
meaning. Still I say sharply as I move towards it hands out­
High -pitched the sound it makes with its throat,
       low and too tender the sound it makes with its

       body -against the walls now,
down.
       Which America is it in?
Which America are we in here?
       Is there an America comprised wholly
of its waiting and my waiting and all forms of the thing 

even the green's -
       a large uncut fabric floating above the soil­ -
a place of attention?
       The voice says wait. Taking a lot of words.
The voice always says wait.
       The sentence like a tongue
in a higher mouth 

       to make the other utterance, the inaudible one,
possible,
       the sentence in its hole, its cavity
of listening,
       flapping, half dead on the wing, through the
hollow indoors,
       the house like a head
with nothing inside
       except this breeze­ -
shall we keep going?
       Where is it, in the century clicking by?
Where, in the America that exists?
       This castle hath a pleasant seat, 

the air nimbly recommends itself,
       the guest approves
by his beloved mansionry
       that heaven's breath smells wooingly here. 

2. 

       The police came and got Stuart, brought him to
Psych Hospital.
       The face on him the face he'd tried to cut off.
Starting at the edge where the hair is fastened.
       Down behind the ear.
As if to lift it off and give it back. Easy. Something
       gelatinous,
an exterior
        destroyed by mismanagement. 

Nonetheless it stayed on.
       You suffer and find the outline, the right
seam (what the suffering is for) -
        you find where it comes off: why can't it come off?
The police brought him to Admitting and he can
       be found there. 

Who would have imagined a face
       could be so full of blood. 

Later he can be found in a room on 4.
       He looks up when you walk in but not at yours.
Hope is something which lies flat against the wall,
       a bad paint job, peeling in spots.
Some people move by in the hallway, 

       some are referred elsewhere or they
wait.
       There is a transaction going on up ahead, a commotion.
Shelley is screaming about the Princess.
       There is a draft here but between two unseen
openings.
       And there is the Western God afraid His face would come off
into our eyes
       so that we have to wait in the cleft
rock -remember? -
       His hand still down on it, we're waiting for Him to
go by, 

       the back of Him is hope, remember,
the off -white wall,
       the thing -in -us -which -is -a -kind -of -fire fluttering
as we wait in here
       for His hand to lift off,
the thing -in -us -which -is -a -kind -of -air
       getting coated with waiting, with the cold satinfinish, 

the thing -which -trails -behind (I dare do all that may
       become a man,
who dares do more is none)
       getting coated, thickly. Oh screw thy story to the
sticking place -
       When he looks up 

because he has had the electric shock,
       and maybe even the insulin shock we're not sure,
the face is gone.
       It's hiding somewhere in here now.
I look and there's no listening in it, foggy place.
       We called him the little twinkler
says his mother at the commitment hearing, 

       because he was the happiest.
The blood in the upstairs of the duplex getting cold.
       Then we have to get the car unimpounded.
Send the keys to his parents.
       Do they want the car?
His wrists tied down to the sides of the bed.
       And the face on that shouldn't come off.
The face on that mustn't come off.
       Scars all round it along the hairline under the
chin.
       Later he had to take the whole body off 

to get the face.
       But me in there while he was still breathing,
both of us waiting to hear something rustle
       and get to it
before it rammed its lights out
       aiming for the brightest spot, the only clue. 

3. 

Because it is the face
       which must be taken off -?
the forward -pointing of it, history?
       that we be returned to the faceless
attention,
       the waiting and waiting for the telling sound.
Am I alone here?
       Did it get out when the other one did
and I miss it?
       Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
The head empty, yes, 

       but on it the face, the idea of principal witness,
the long corridor behind it -
       a garden at one end and a garden at
the other -
       the spot of the face
on the expanse of the body,
       the spot on the emptiness (tomorrow and tomorrow),
the spot pointing
       into every direction, looking, trying to find
corners - 

(and all along the cloth of Being fluttering)
        (and all along the cloth, the sleep -
before the beginning, before the itch -)
       How I would get it back
sitting here on the second -floor landing,
       one flight above me one flight below,
listening for the one notch
       on the listening which isn't me 

listening -
       Sleep, sleep, but on it the dream of reason, eyed,
pointing forward, tapering for entry,
       the look with its meeting place at
vanishing point, blade honed for
       quick entry,
etcetera, glance, glance again,
        (make my keen knife see not the
wound it makes) -
       So that you 1) must kill the King -yes­ -
2) must let her change, change -until you lose her,
       the creature made of nets, 

       whose eyes are closed,
whose left hand is raised
        (now now now now hisses the voice)
(her hair made of sentences) and
       3) something new come in but
what? listening.
       Is the house empty?
Is the emptiness housed?
       Where is America here from the landing, my face on 

my knees, eyes closed to hear
       further?
Lady M. is the intermediary phase.
       God help us.
Unsexed unmanned.
       Her open hand like a verb slowly descending onto the free,
her open hand fluttering all round her face now,
       trying to still her gaze, to snag it on 

those white hands waving and diving
       in the water that is not there.