things done for themselves (preverbs) for Susan

by George Quasha

1                                                                           last first words

We walk together like a field of fireflies.
It gives the ear back to itself.
Hard to beat being heard.
No word for this thing between us, feeling afield.

Mark the opening eye.
The words I leave out rip me apart.
The mystery is the core violating itself, blurted the absent voice.

Time’s recovering, I’m here to quit the garden for good.

Reading poetry suffers it to speak.
Violation is not what you think, unless it is.

2                                                    wanting it all in every line

Things done for themselves are the only things done for all.

Just walking by she multiplies in futures [flash].
I’m the one in the middle longing to be the many.
Put eye inside the empty letter and she looks back at you.
Voyeurism’s the illusion I’m not looking at myself.

Exhaust the wisdom impulse before it exhausts paradise.

3                                                            further otherness

Today’s the day I rewrite my biography.
Pen slips on the slopes of sorrow.

I can’t help believing in one thing after another.
Sounds good to me sounds true enough.
And then. And then.

4                                                                  no place else to learn

A blurt’s a site of first breath.
This only sounds this way.
We wave through each other to approach.
And flex and flex.

Optimal includes bottom.

The world’s singing to itself again through our dog.
The tremor in the voice lets the knower out.
Poetry is the state stating.
Says: Say what keeps saying what it is.

5                                                                 unsearching

You didn’t know it but it let you know it.
A form is what knows to take place before you.
It gives the eye back to itself.
Seeing marks.

Let’s meet in the dark where you read through yourself.
Juliet, the verbal scent.

Names get a life to be spoken.
And so I makes my ascent into present.
Poetry says it better than it sounds.
If I don’t mean what I say at least it means me back.

The only things done for all are the ones done once for themselves.

6                                                                             being first again

I barely feel myself hanging together.
She knows to call me by my calling.
It takes a life to be known.
To tone.
Like things fall free alike.

The underline rhythmic is over and out. Over and out.

7                                              pre names the program to optimize

Hearing marks.
Speak in the first person on earth.

She sets my system on merge.
Meanwhile I call from a verge, Don’t strand me on the grounds of sound.
I can say nothing I can’t hear.

The vision’s the body seeing through itself.
The poem even now is hearing itself.

Frog pond in the dark’s bounding across from here.