Treatise on Hank Mobley
- Sean Singer
Mobley talked about revolution.
Asterisk, palladium, forever unjaded.
He talked about two lives—the one we learn with
and the one we live after that.
Mobley slowly moped,
as if he was impersonating himself
in order to annihilate it.
Mobley referred explicitly to everyday life,
“I put my heavy form on them, then I can
do everything I want to do.”
Think of Leeuwenhoek,
smaller and upside-down
through his own lens,
to capture the place as a sound,
yet in making that sound,
tightened the grasp on the material
that supported his question.
Mobley talked about what is subversive about love.
When the door to a room closes,
the light, orange as a feather, under.
Mobley was positive about the refusal of constraints.
Strung out, his rung in the ladder broke, as
anyone who can swing can get a message across—
People who talk about revolutions
and not these things
have corpses in their mouths.
(from Guernica)
*
Checking my feed reader after ages, I saw a poem by Singer in someone's rather long post about books they've blurbed. There were these lines: 'Become Ashtabula, taxonomic, a burned running, a fur peeling, a pure feeling, an orange./ Become an admirer.'
So I went looking for more poems. And up here's one of them.
*
Been feeling partially synaesthetic since my three-day migraine last week. I can't remember when I last had one that was so very bad/intense. I felt a little shifted, displaced in my head and body. Maybe I'm imagining the synaesthesia - okay, I definitely am - but I want to mix things up, tangle all the signals and make a mess.
I am also in the grip of spring fever. I know autumn is the more fashionable season but here, spring is autumn with a newer sun: the leaves are falling and scrunchy and things smell dusty and - all right, instead of fruit and harvest there are flowers and drunken bees and new leaves so green you want to say tender again and again but only secretly and to yourself so no one accuses you of not even being ironic.
*
It's easy to forget the world, draw up a chair and watch things grow.
*
Memo to bite my tongue.
- Sean Singer
Mobley talked about revolution.
Asterisk, palladium, forever unjaded.
He talked about two lives—the one we learn with
and the one we live after that.
Mobley slowly moped,
as if he was impersonating himself
in order to annihilate it.
Mobley referred explicitly to everyday life,
“I put my heavy form on them, then I can
do everything I want to do.”
Think of Leeuwenhoek,
smaller and upside-down
through his own lens,
to capture the place as a sound,
yet in making that sound,
tightened the grasp on the material
that supported his question.
Mobley talked about what is subversive about love.
When the door to a room closes,
the light, orange as a feather, under.
Mobley was positive about the refusal of constraints.
Strung out, his rung in the ladder broke, as
anyone who can swing can get a message across—
People who talk about revolutions
and not these things
have corpses in their mouths.
(from Guernica)
*
Checking my feed reader after ages, I saw a poem by Singer in someone's rather long post about books they've blurbed. There were these lines: 'Become Ashtabula, taxonomic, a burned running, a fur peeling, a pure feeling, an orange./ Become an admirer.'
So I went looking for more poems. And up here's one of them.
*
Been feeling partially synaesthetic since my three-day migraine last week. I can't remember when I last had one that was so very bad/intense. I felt a little shifted, displaced in my head and body. Maybe I'm imagining the synaesthesia - okay, I definitely am - but I want to mix things up, tangle all the signals and make a mess.
I am also in the grip of spring fever. I know autumn is the more fashionable season but here, spring is autumn with a newer sun: the leaves are falling and scrunchy and things smell dusty and - all right, instead of fruit and harvest there are flowers and drunken bees and new leaves so green you want to say tender again and again but only secretly and to yourself so no one accuses you of not even being ironic.
*
It's easy to forget the world, draw up a chair and watch things grow.
*
Memo to bite my tongue.
