MUSIC OF FORGETTING

Our talk finding horses
                       blinkers

                            the crowd held
invisible so as Nietzsche claimed
of certain types of personalities

                                           framed
by their efficient blindness so that
loss itself becomes a kind of sight
              a song separates from air

   and we were walking in love
                              feet off the ground                 
ears in our mouths
                the casual way

I long for      
              only a wash of people
                    only as if light

                    in cones two skybeams shone                         
            on you and on me

what we are
                          to what we'll be

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AMSTERDAM

Paintings of sunflowers
on yellow walls in fat gold
frames inflame the minimal
mood you said punctuation
you said you like
punctuation that you are
tired I said I am too I am
supposed to be home
in a quilt I am empty you
too you said our work
does not always make us free
next day I wake at 4 am
with an image of a wheatfield
glowing below a murder
of commas waiting going go

__

Seeing less can mean seeing more. Reduction, loss, blindness, silence—these might be revelatory. "The music of forgetting" is what Nietzsche calls that which you hear when you tune out the world. This poem began with a walk through Golden Gate Park with Ian Huebert, during the annual free music festival held there. "Amsterdam" began with a walk a few months later in Amsterdam, with Jared Hawkley. Northern Europe had just been hit by a ferocious cold spell. The canals were frozen, an orchestra performed on the ice, and we slipped and slid our way to the Van Gogh museum.