S/T

“Depending on what I meant by here and me, and being, and there I never went looking for extravagant meanings, there I never much varied, only the here would sometimes seem to vary.” –Samuel Beckett, Stories & Texts for Nothing

“…Libraries have survived as an institution in part because of the success of the internal orders of books. That is, the tension between the library’s external order and the internal orders of books makes the library a success. The internal orders of books contain and supersede external orders through their status as writing.” Loss Pequeno Glazier, Digital Poetics: The Making of E-Poetries

– – –

“Good intension.”

My science-bent peer delivers this breathtaking typo and I silently thank her for valuing i more than “t”.[1]

 

I try to explain that GOOD! everything actually is better in tension.

Meaning doesn’t coagulate around singulars– an event has no hermeneutic value unless placed within

A tense shift or

A cloud saturated with potential or

A storm: every raindrop a crystallized conjunction.

 

Tension maintains shape.

The bead of water cloistered into itself,

The insides pulling outside, re-membraning like blood

Tension creates definition.

Paradigmatic chains illustrating how all precision is relational,

Language a loosened network of differences.

And tension creates beauty.

Her muddled consonants rubbing up against a paper-trailed legacy,

A frictioned formalism sparking so much more than what she

 

Intended.

 

We are lost in the desert of babble,

Where words swallow meaning and I don’t see a tower.

I think we’re in the wrong Babel.

Good.

Otherwise, I would climb the tower and then be further away from water.

 

 

We are lost in the valley of idea and word,

Where my tree doesn’t look like your tree doesn’t look like Ferdinand’s tree.

Good.

This is what makes a forest.

 

 

I don’t think I’ve ever understood things the way they were intended to be.

Good.

The sparks will keep me warm.