"Under Waterfalls" from Lost Lullabye, by Ben Makinen.

I decide it would be a good idea to fly, and take my usual running leap off the asphalt. It's night, and there are no cars, nobody walking on the streets. My friend, E., decides to give it a try and runs alongside me. I'm experienced, and have learned to take a fall. Couple of leaps and I'm off, circling the old neighborhood, gaining altitude above her. She's down there, still trying, and hales me from below. "The cape," she yells. "Throw down your cape!" Right, my black satin veronica with its red lining has special properties, and I no longer need it. Besides, she's naked down there. I release it, and it ripples down the air to her. She'll find it useful. I fly off to the exhibit, housed in an immense old wooden mansion with many rooms. Each room has its own curved, almost barrel-shaped roof; the two sides of each roof come together in a peaked seam, so that looking up, one seems to be standing under a section of overturned boat: a viking longship, or Butuan balangay. Inside, the ribbed ceilings are covered in strips of woven T'boli t'nalak. There are sculptures and paintings from everywhere, and I'm amazed because each room is dedicated to a particular artist. Wandering into one room, I turn to find the door locked. They've locked me in. I curl up near a corner on the floor and fall asleep. When I awaken, it's morning. The doors are open, and people are wandering in to look at the art. I remember that I'm invisible; to myself, I look like a roughly chalked outline of a human. I get up, walk out of the room and fly away.

     the movement we call
regression    to slip
back   find  in sleep
or erasure    solace
yet
        the rooms of
memory
have made an interior
of you
            so that any
return to what
you thought was
home has already been re
membered with
       those moments
you would choose
to forget
        if you could

Lost Lullabye, Ben Makinen & Area 15.

+ + + + +

Dancer chooses music -> choreographs movement to go with.
Composer chooses libretto -> composes music to go with.

Inversification of the above: music chooses dance, text chooses music. Rewriting, in words, of a symphony.
--- Sawako Nakayasu ("Fever, light")

rise with monstrous repetition.
unfocusing in present tense progressing is
recording.
turns into bird song peeps on the wire.
ordinaries of muscle flex returns to sun charged glass.
eclipse
behind negative film protects the cornea.
twisting bent
i think to computer facings. as to
a surgical table bent or tensed over some sewing job. or to books
with which once played now ordinates discussion.
fit to goals as gradations of judgement.
structures grow to fit loss. transfer
of work hours consider the diaspora with intricate
details and glue sniffers. jollibee spaghetti. face
each day with a coating layered
for different weather. some thought
collectors
while others
love strong emotion.

often in the act of procrastination there is nothing to do but wait while you hurry along doing nothing. yet at the same time you are watching and listening while a story gets repeated again and again. it's digging your heels in like this that seems so satisfying and so endlessly fascinating in a boring way. to forget the details of the last 3 hours while following the migration routes of an extinct species of nightjar. i know what i'm up against and i try to thwart it in every way possible. i will slow down the clock or flee to the state of catatonia. somewhere in between clicks there are larger caverns to mine and darkness that will forestall moments of precision. later on i realize it's not precision at all, or at least not my precision. to throw himself against the walls. to throw words and become a blur an insect a superhero.

Improvisational activity
by Sawako Nakayasu

At karaoke, sometimes a wrong song gets entered, or shows up on the screen, for whatever reason. To sing it anyway, working with the background music and timing of the lyrics, as delivered.

What did all that traveling mean, and why
can't i remember? I remember. This is not
nostalgia. How the cool light shifting
over the slough near Crescent City reminds
me of Rembrandt. I counted red barns.
There is a prison at Pelican Bay, a town
named Trinidad, and a town named Samoa.
What does all this have to do with you.
Now the snow crunches under my boots, now
sand and heat scrubs the skin on my heels
dry and bleeding. There were many deserts.
Please explain why. No, I'd forgotten
there are no more explanations left.

forgetfulness in the details. buzzing where memory ain't. where in the blood exists a faint blur i relate to escapism, but also where the color washes out to a faint sigh on the canvas. she reminds me of rabbit skin glue, which i took pride in mixing. smelly the initiation into knowledge, and sticky. afterwards there were soft wet strokes, with which i prepared a future ground. i didn't know that. in the ballad there is always a turn to or away. sometimes there are canyons, metaphors for descent and ascent. at one end of the plain, there is an edge nearly obscured by the grasses. this might've been in the dakotas, a few miles west of wounded knee. a cold breeze from the north bends us in one direction, and then another.

Occasionally I lose my voice, while wondering what my voice is. While I write about wondering, Gracie walks into the room, and sits on her pillow. The rain has stopped. I wonder why.

TEACHING

increasingly i hear
quiet on the home
front as i rattle
on and on all those
problems are better
now the students repeat
their voices are strong
and clearly they think
things are different.
things are different.