I'm watching a sea of static on TV
late at night
I'm talking to my girlfriend on the phone
I'm writing a poem
and finishing it later
I'm living in a tent behind Hampshire College
I'm going nowhere
I'm standing on the balcony of F2,
going nowhere
I'm living on Bridge Street in Northampton
I'm thinking about thinking
I'm thinking about memory
I'm taking off my shirt
I'm looking at the clock
I'm wondering how it will end
and when it began
I'm floating, a tiny black-eyed fetus
in amniotic fluid
I'm making notes for a future poem
I'm learning to write the alphabet
by tracing sandpaper letters
I'm writing a story for the first time
in my life
I am six
I am twenty-five
I am thirty-four
I'm telling her about myself
I'm using her attention
to search through my memory,
to reconstruct myself
from different angles
I'm telling you about telling her
I'm remembering remembering
-Jim DuBois
Dec 13, 2003
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Artifacts of my Intelligence
Artifacts of my intelligence
Artifacts of my imagination
Artifacts of my existence,
like a poem or a painting
Artifacts of my consciousness
Artifacts of my memory
Artifacts of my mind,
like a signature or a sentence
leftover creations,
manipulated playthings,
static reminders
of a fluid mind
-- they can't be me --
I just leave behind things
which illuminate a tiny fraction
of my complexity,
that might give you that clue
you've been looking for for so long
that shows you are not alone
-- someone, some other mind,
is out there,
thinking,
doing,
creating.
-Jim DuBois
March 29, 2009
Artifacts of my imagination
Artifacts of my existence,
like a poem or a painting
Artifacts of my consciousness
Artifacts of my memory
Artifacts of my mind,
like a signature or a sentence
leftover creations,
manipulated playthings,
static reminders
of a fluid mind
-- they can't be me --
I just leave behind things
which illuminate a tiny fraction
of my complexity,
that might give you that clue
you've been looking for for so long
that shows you are not alone
-- someone, some other mind,
is out there,
thinking,
doing,
creating.
-Jim DuBois
March 29, 2009
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Overlooked
I hear there is more
old growth forest left in Massachusetts
than they thought.
In narrow bands,
too high for logging,
too low to clear for skiing,
they stand in the mountains
like they always have
because no one had a use
for the place they lived.
And I want to look
behind a person’s eyes,
to the ruined landscape,
to the left-over places
of their minds
just to see what
is still growing there,
undisturbed
by the turbulence
of oppression.
Those places that went un-noticed
by society,
the places they forgot were there.
-Jim DuBois
January 20, 1999
old growth forest left in Massachusetts
than they thought.
In narrow bands,
too high for logging,
too low to clear for skiing,
they stand in the mountains
like they always have
because no one had a use
for the place they lived.
And I want to look
behind a person’s eyes,
to the ruined landscape,
to the left-over places
of their minds
just to see what
is still growing there,
undisturbed
by the turbulence
of oppression.
Those places that went un-noticed
by society,
the places they forgot were there.
-Jim DuBois
January 20, 1999
Monday, April 6, 2009
(Discarded Left-over Abandoned Forgotten)
Edges + Lost Places
vacant upstairs apartment
I broke into the
And crept out onto the roof
I kept thinking of
the cracks in the sidewalk
the grass growing in the alley
the vines on the fence
between the parking lots
The forgotten places where
two things border one another
The discarded, left-over space between
one clear definition and another
Cracks
Borders
Edges
The places people rarely look into
like beneath the sofa cushions where the change collects
or
the strip of trees beside the highway where I
found the skull of a dog
and undergrowth so thick
you couldn’t walk through it
-Jim DuBois
July 20, 1998
I broke into the
And crept out onto the roof
I kept thinking of
the cracks in the sidewalk
the grass growing in the alley
the vines on the fence
between the parking lots
The forgotten places where
two things border one another
The discarded, left-over space between
one clear definition and another
Cracks
Borders
Edges
The places people rarely look into
like beneath the sofa cushions where the change collects
or
the strip of trees beside the highway where I
found the skull of a dog
and undergrowth so thick
you couldn’t walk through it
-Jim DuBois
July 20, 1998
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