Brian TeareTHREE POEMSListen to Audio IntroductionIf there is a bare spot on the ground the best possible weed for that environment will grow. Audio Version of Poem #1public health clinic squeaky cheap chair I open the book and Lao Tzu says "knowing how to endure is wisdom" patient at root means each word turns flat to suffer its definition and grainy anxiety both "longsuffering" taints my waiting and "one undergoing medical treatment" a fourteenth century * Christian word "Studie to be pacient in suffring" counsels Jesse the phlebotomist De Imitatione Christi needs only two sticks where "study" means then the five vials "seek to be helpful" one by one grow warm an eye's run of rhymes ruby beauty rutilant I leave the clinic dizzy in the crook of my arm gauze and two band-aids the book of wisdom for Kerri Webster We think that at last our feet are on the right path and we will not falter or fail. Audio Version of poem #2 sometimes I feel very why me about it very Christian I mean I'm convinced for weeks returning to one book as if I believe suffering interpreted correctly to make a medicine of its vocabulary could be really useful while I wait I read * as if a certain diction could help only if in On Light I read I've made it a charm Matter cannot be emptied of form; through continual use form is light itself. at first it seemed awful to be ill without purpose now I have lumen enough to have nothing and that Somebody's got to sit down and really want it. Audio Version of poem #3everybody is born after eating lunch in the same condition I feel so sleepy a little figure with a sword I have this mind I thought we were going from present to future to cut our way through life no joy no sorrow we were going to do it one thousand three hundred nights –after Agnes Martin and Po Chü-i
|