IN THE MAKING
what we
make of
this is
what
we are
made of
—Scott Watson
TO, the infinitive
Less and less often am I able to say I am a poet in truth. Eventually I hope not to need any words at all. A minor trembling occurred to me just the other day, occurred in me, when I tried saying these words to myself.
Do you want these words to happen to you? They did happen when I stumbled over imagination's force without measure, whether in calamity or calm, which is how we can mean it when we mean words to say anything at all,
even god? Words, like our selves, can be lost in our assumptions. How can words let us free our selves of ourselves, let us let go here and hold onto this omnipotent and wondrously charged nothingness that happens
as we live and die?
—Scott Watson
LETTER TO JOHN
I believe
you when
you say
it is a
burden--
but I
would
encourage
you
with the fact
that what
is burdensome
is also productive
gainful
in other ways.
If we did not
bear
or accept
this burden
we would
never see
ourselves
or anyone else,
which is
the reason
to continue
with our own
death
at hand
—Scott Watson
A POEM ON PAPER
let it be written, what is written,
as well as what it is
written on
unmodulated breath
says nothing.
modulation makes it mean nothing:
a beautycraft that gardens
our permanent delusions.
when we don't have to talk
breath comes freely.
a walk, or sit in woods,
lungs in synch with being alone,
a universe everything stars in stares.
who ever is
in their own breath
and knows it
to remember?
a certain measure out of our minds we are
but it's a breath's small instance that is each its life,
from birth a smacked gasp
to an bamboo whack awakening
for instance
endless beginnings,
breath taken from our own flesh and blood, which is
what but air pulsating at a wave solid to sense
the earth breeze we erupt from
somewhere formless as now
being in the body of breath we cry out of what is
—Scott Watson
THE JOY OF POETRY
after bathing
dog, first chance
she'd get loose 'd
go roll, lave
her sides in
grass, dirt, shit
she loved it! &
at times
would even eat
shit of other dogs--
what a
shit-eating
happy crazy dog!
—Scott Watson
FOR YOU/NEW PSALM
we have
language
native
as it is
for us
untaught
in, of, from
life itself
directly
from us
for us
as it is.
we have it too, too obviously,
slimy institutional
school of stagnation
mass word
lifelessness
so many fingered.
things fresh and alive
the way they are
pointing
through blockage
things clear all over
a poem
a tree
or pool of tide, for a while
that grows
what it means to be
word-life,
poem, home
—Scott Watson