I’m stuck on what to write about for the blog, as I am in a sea of stories, vignettes, ideas, chapters, tabs, notebooks, note-cards, and a new storyboard on the actual wall. But this quote by Allen Ginsberg I found in my writing notebook is saying something to me in some kind of poetry, about my current life as of now and how it feels and how the creation of the book grows, and so on. So I am going to free-write a poem about Ginsberg’s quote, which is this:
“Without even intending it, there is that little shiver of a moment in time preserved in the crystal cabinet of the mind. A little shiver of eternal space. That’s what I was looking for.”
–Allen Ginsberg
“That’s-what-I-was-looking-for.”
When I look at it, when I word what I’m looking for,
it vanishes. Once I get to the word “looking”
I see the tail end of its nightgown moving as if underwater
rounding the corner or entering a door, carrying away
the simplest sentence I have chased all this time.
The words, the connections, move but also elude me. Like treasures
in lush green grass I get intoxicated like Sarah
in Jareth’s labyrinth, time escaping, all wrapped up by
oddities, curiosities, layers, touch, sight, smell, test.
So I go back.
“…there-is-that-little-shiver-of-a-moment-in-time-preserved-in-the-crystal-cabinet….”
Shivers of moments. Shimmers. Light. Slivers. I see Chekhov freshly pressed in Times New Roman:
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
I carry so many shivers, gathering them in my notebooks and poems,
quick jots, so that I may take it to the keyboard and write the vignette–
the cut-out of my heart.
All these pieces are from one broken mirror, its large pieces
splintered; sharp diamonds reflecting the night sky overhead.
I near the broken mirror barefoot in the grass, and the pieces
look like speckled seas I could dip my toe in, then maybe my limbs and body
and then under into the cool diamond-studded water;
so deep is the purpose of my reflection
that it too eludes me–
the water, the night reflecting myself
contains universes, black holes and dwarf stars,
death stars and gases and vacuums
and molecules and atoms
and the graveyard for stars.
The purpose.
The purpose of the words? To reveal the shiver,
so shaken that words lose sound and then form.
To reveal the shiver–the trembling, clearest point
of guts and instinct and longing, pain, and beauty.
To reveal the shiver–which is ourselves.
Difficult Degrees 