Anne Waldman: Reading at The Prague Writers' Festival

Without Stitching Closed the Eye of the Falcon

without care without seed pearl without stitching closed the
eye of the falcon without seemly rectitude without the platitude
of o thou muddled media pundit without questionable doubt or
metabolism without a geographic category of speech that will travail
without a hintor glint of “secular” mastery, without ritual framing    
without a theatrical sense of illusion and bandying about or on or inside
a thermosphere without it working against you and when it does being
able to go on without it without gavottes without gazelles that you
study in neighboring Persian poetries without spallation and
without a diving bell how will you survive?  without rapacious wildcats
without the sense of security you have always expected without your
familiar stage fright without the caves without the bombing of caves
without the mystery of caves without the caves in your memory of that
mystery that lives in caves without caves that long to exist in the
hand print in the cave of that memory without the rivets that hold
the wing together that hold the whole throbbing machine together that
assert the rivet dominion without which you do not have a plan of
fastening together of wings of arms for the automaton that holds
the capital together without its own mind of wheels and cogs and mudras
that run the show without all the pixels and efforts of more dominion
without borders to cross without needing to carry things over borders
the  invasion of your homeland (coming? coming soon?) without it, what
call in the night what call is answered what nuance what tantrum in the night
what martyrdom of dreaming your own birth your own end of history
or end of speculation what call what alarm is sounding deep in the home?



Makeup on Empty Space

I am putting makeup on empty space
all patinas convening on empty space
rouge blushing on empty space
I am putting makeup on empty space
pasting eyelashes on empty space
painting the eyebrows of empty space
piling creams on empty space
painting the phenomenal world
I am hanging ornaments on empty space
gold clips, lacquer combs, plastic hairpins on empty space
I am sticking wire pins into empty space
I pour words over empty space, enthrall the empty space
packing, stuffing, jamming empty space
spinning necklaces around empty space
Fancy this, imagine this: painting the phenomenal world
bangles on wrists
pendants hung on empty space
I am putting my memory into empty space
undressing you
hanging the wrinkled clothes on a nail
hanging the green coat on a nail
dancing in the evening it ended with dancing in the evening
I am still thinking about putting makeup on empty space
I want to scare you: the hanging night, the drifting night,
the moaning night, daughter of troubled sleep I want toscare you
I bind as far as cold day goes    
I bind the power of 20 husky men
I bind the seductive colorful women, all of them
I bind the massive rock
I bind the hanging night, the drifting night, the
moaning night, daughter of troubled sleep
I am binding my debts, I magnetize the phone bill
bind the root of my sharp pointed tongue
I cup my hands in water, splash water on empty space
water drunk by empty space
Look what thoughts will do  Look what words will do
from nothing to the face
from nothing to the root of the tongue
from nothing to speaking of empty space
I bind the ash tree
I bind the yew
I bind the willow
I bind uranium
I bind the uneconomical un-renewable energy of uranium
dash uranium to empty space
I bind the color red I seduce the color red to empty space
I put the sunset in empty space
I take the blue of his eyes and make an offering to emptyspace
renewable blue
I take the green of everything coming to life, it grows&
climbs into empty space
I put the white of the snow at the foot of empty space
I clasp the yellow of the cat’s eyes sitting in the
black space I clasp them to my heart, empty space
I want the brown of this floor to rise up into empty space
Take the floor apart to find the brown,
bind it up again under spell of empty space
I want to take this old wall apart I am rich in my mindthinking
of this, I am thinking of putting makeup on empty space
Everything crumbles around empty space
the thin dry week crumbles, the milkweed is blown into emptyspace
I bind the stars reflected in your eye
from nothing to these typing fingers
from nothing to the legs of the elk
from nothing to the neck of the deer
from nothing to porcelain teeth
from nothing to the fine stand of pine in the forest
I kept it going when I put the water on
when I let the water run
sweeping together in empty space
There is a better way to say empty space
Turn yourself inside out and you might disappear
you have a new definition in empty space
What I like about impermanence is the clash
of my big body with empty space
I am putting the floor back together again
I am rebuilding the wall
I am slapping mortar on bricks
I am fastening the machine together with delicate wire
There is no eternal thread, maybe there is thread of puregold
I am starting to sing inside about the empty space
there is some new detail every time
I am taping the picture I love so well on the wall:
moonless black night beyond country plaid curtains
everything illuminated out of empty space
I hand the black linen dress on my body
the hanging night, the drifting night, the moaning night
daughter of troubled sleep
This occurs to me
I hand up a mirror to catch stars, everything occurs to meout in the
night in my skull of empty space
I go outside in starry ice
I build up the house again in memory of empty space
This occurs to me about empty space
that it is never to be mentioned again
Fancy this
imagine this
painting the phenomenal world
there’s talk of dressing the body with strange adornments
to remind you of a vow of empty space
there’s talk of the discourse in your mind like a silkworm
I wish to venture into a not chiseled place
I pour sand on the ground
Objects and vehicles emerge from the fog
the canyon is dangerous tonight
suddenly there are warning lights
The patrol is helpful in the manner of guiding
there is talk of slowing down
there is talk of a feminine deity
I bind her with a briar
I bind with the tooth of a tiger
I bind with my quartz crystal
I magnetize the worlds
I cover myself with jewels
I drink amrita
there is some new detail
there is a spangle on her shoe
there is a study on her boot
the tires are studded for the difficult climb
I put my hands to my face
I am putting makeup on empty space
I wanted to scare you with the night that scared me
the drifting night, the moaning night
Someone was always intruding to make you forget empty space
you put it all on
you paint your nails
you put on scarves
all the time adorning empty space
Whatever-your-name-is I tell you “empty space”
with your fictions with dancing come around to it
with you funny way of singing come around to it
with your smiling come to it
with your enormous retinue & accumulation come around toit
with your extras come round to it
with your good fortune, with your lazy fortune come round toit
when you look most like a bird, that is the time to comearound to it
when you are cheating, come to it
when you are in your anguished head
when you are not sensible
when you are insisting on the
praise from many tongues
It begins with the root of the tongue
it begins with the root of the heart
there is a spinal cord of wind
singing & moaning in empty



Jack Kerouac Dream

He's talking speedily about the evil of the feminine but he likes it. O bitter tones of the demon feminine. He's in a repressed New England winter room, but oddly it's like the old whorehouse in Eldora with bats inside the walls. There's peeling wallpaper of gold fleur-de-lys pattern on green on the far side. And his "coat of arms," or rather "his mother's arm coat (arm chair?)" is close by. It looks like a shrunken deer's head, size of a rabbit's foot with French letters crudely scrawled on a wooden plaque beneath, "est peur" (translates "is fear" but cognate to, or sounds like, "espoir"—hope). He's shivering in an old camel's hair coat, smoking—Chesterfields? Old Golds?—in front of a raging fire. He's wanting to "hunt and gather," he says, but it's too cold. Where can we go to forage now that "all the skies are broken"? I am thinking if only I were born earlier I could love him, take care of him. Close to his face now, I see its raging corpuscles in the dancing firelight. Intricate aborigine designs tattooed on a remarkably pristine visage. "It's a drift, flesh and bone, mortification, deadpan, life's a raked field," he mumbles. I'm part of a Buddhist plot to get him to be reborn to "liberate all sentient beings." I'm inviting him to give a reading at The Academy of the Meticulous Future. But what may I offer? "I tried calling your phone was dead was why I came." "Ummm." He's off somewhere else, his eyes moist and glassy.

I Remember Being Arrested...
—after Joe Brainard

I remember being arrested at Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, what I was wearing: a red & white Hawai'ian shirt, white straw hat with plaid ribbon, white pants with a gentle crease down the front.

I remember the guards in their black "action" suits. I remember thinking they are "just boys."

I remember the guards with their megaphones giving a countdown as we squatted on the Rocky Flats property. "You have ten minutes to evacuate the premises. . . . you have nine minutes . . . you have eight minutes ..." & so on.

I remember what a beautiful day it was how passive the mountains looked, how majestic.

I remember thinking "all this could disappear."

I remember thinking I was six years old when this place was built, how it cost something like 250 million dollars.

How the word "trigger" is a funny word, the name for a horse, for a gun, not a bomb.

I remember thinking the word "button" was also a funny word to use. I remember the ten-pound plutonium "buttons" extracted from fuel rods were shipped to Rocky Flats on trains.

I remembered "Tender Buttons" from Gertrude Stein.

I remember we meditated on the train tracks & tried to stop the shipments of plutonium.

I remember trying to sound intelligent when the microphone was shoved in my face and not just singing "We Shall Overcome."

I remember thinking it's hard to visualize plutonium. Something that is invisible and doesn't exist in nature. I remembered that it comes from uranium.

I remember trying to visualize bombarding uranium with neutrons. I remember trying to visualize the chart of elements as it hung on my high school wall while riding in the bus to the courthouse in Golden.

I remember being with Allen Ginsberg in Chicago during the Chicago Seven trials, I remember thinking that I would demonstrate with him anywhere in the world.

I remember being with Allen Ginsberg at a gay rights benefit in Aspen, how we were in a bathroom right before the reading and he needed to inject the needle with insulin into his arm.

I remember Allen's good cheer on the bus to be booked in Golden, also his gentle anger.

I remember how I went and xeroxed colored paper with mantras on them to hand out at the demonstrations in Chicago. We went to the park. It was getting dark. I remember a lot of people had megaphones. I remember I started chanting "Om Aing Gring Cling Chamunda Yeh Vijaya" into a megaphone.

I remember how we chanted mantras then & we are chanting mantras now and we will keep chanting mantras for the rest of our lives.

I remember thinking as we rode the bus to Golden that it was a particular kind of bus, reserved for prisoners or mental patients.

I remember making a huge circle of human bodies for miles & miles around Rocky Flats.

I remember when I was pregnant I stayed away.

I remember seeing the deformed calf born without hair at the stable where we would go horseback riding near Rocky Flats.

I remember thinking I would go scatter some of Allen Ginsberg's ashes at Rocky Flats but then I didn't act on that thought.

I remember looking into my son's newborn face & wanting to save him from every possible hurt or damage. I remember thinking that the enemy may be invisible. I was in a rocking chair. I was holding him tightly. It was the middle of the night.



...saw his cheekbone..... (Separation Song)
after the Thai

saw his cheekbone    saw it again

clean on the eye    clean against the eye

the ridge   the lean ridge

the graceful ridge   a stoical ridge

clean against the eye       ridge without shame

crossing the bridge & he so far away

I have to travel for my bread & butter

saw his sweet shape of bone

gentle line of bone           stoic's thin line

flesh a rise of color were on it

the flesh not blush but man's stoic thin line

this map of Wuhan to find my way & he so faraway

wish he was on this way with me

& I'm not walking so well

saw his question    do you need to travel so hard

saw it & heard my mind do you need

now mounting the car do you need & all the way in China

it's far to his question      & watch the passing show
saw syllables & heard his long ah tones

the charms of this he this he the loved one

what i see in him radical & the need is pure

saw his gait              a centaur's

make him mythical he is my celestial centaur

saw the gait do you need & hold me between legs
& bound his strong legs

to think always of exile   exile out of here

here that crazes you        a strange dynasty

but "over here" i move my poetry towards him

see the way i lie down with Buddha in Bangkok

see my faith astride the Tao gardens of Wuhan

see his body                         & i'm the old exile

do you need he said              & rocking back & forth

when we loved we were in a languid season

the war was behind us         his face rang clear

clean against the eye



skin
          Meat
                  BONES (chant)



I’ve come to tellyou of the things dear to me
& what I’vediscovered of the                                 skin

                                    Meat

               BONES

your body wakingup so sweet to me                skin
dawn light it’sgreen                    skin
I’m in hungryrepose
                                      Meat

it’s gettingclose to motion
                                       O skeleton
                                                              BONE

you might stretchit now       skin
so warm, flesh
and lastingawhile

                                 BONE

clock like a BONEcreaking
memory like aBONE creaking

little laughterlines around the eyes                 skin
& how themouth’s redder than the rest          Meat
or nipples offpurple rib cage of
                                                         BONES
It’s morninganywhere

O sitting andlying around in my weary tinsel skin
got to get up andwalk around in my cumbersome skin

put onlightweight cotton skin
& shufflingskin slippers

the light’s goingto make it raw             skin
or vulnerable                                     Meat
or hard
                       BONES


I could pierce it             skin
I’ll grow newskin, undergo big character change

please get undermy skin take hold of me
interest or annoyme intensely

jump me out of myskin!

no skin off yournose, buster
he’sthin-skinned, she’s thick
dermis &epidermis mating

Allen’s nephewonce had a skin
                                                head
                                                       haircut  

o poor flayeddeer with gentle hair

film on surfaceof milk this morning

only skin deep

let’s go to theoily skin flick

tendency of highfrequency alternating current
to flow throughthe outer layer only of a conductor

okay, you’vewounded me, but it’s only skin deep

I’m sitting downin my sweet smelling clammy skin
to eat some juicymeat!

one man’s meat isanother man’s poison

animal flesh istasty

had a dream themeat was turned inside out,
flowers bloomingthere

Had a dream thejackals came (this was in India)
to collect theMeat of my father’s forefingers

O cloud shapedlike a tenderloin steak
tree Meat

Meat of Buddha

Had a Meatsandwich had a Meat day
everyone wascarrying their Meat around, flinging
it in the breeze

Small town,downtown, spring: time to show off your Meat
go home when it’sdark and sit down with the
                                                                         BONES

I live in a barebones room
he’s working myfingers to the bone
my friend Stevenis living close to the BONE

I’m boning up onmy Dante, William Carlos Williams,
Campion andGertrude Stein

Why is he such abonehead? won’t listen to a thing I say

Why are they soBONE idle? won’t do a thing I say
i’m gonna pointmy aborigine BONE at you & get you wiser!

I’ve got a BONEto pick with the senator

I’ve got a BONEto pick with the Pentagon

The bone ofcontention has to do with whether or not
we get a lease

Our old ’68Ford’s an old BONE-shaker

Ivory, dentine,whalebone, dominoes, dice, castanets, corset
are some of thethings made of BONE

but after I diemake of my BONES, flutes
and of my skin,drums

I implore you inthe name of all female deities wrathful &
compassionate &protect endangered species also!




Read at Prague Wednesday 10 June, 2009.