the question of books

process/form: approximately one poem per day, written on impulse without revisions, mimicking the basics of Neruda's form within "The Book of Questions."

about Neruda & "The Book of Questions":
"The Anglo-Saxon root of the word "question" is kuere, which meant to ask or seek, hence to gain or win. In Latin, it was quaerere and questum; in English it became quaestor and later "quest," "inquest," and "question." Other off-shoots of the root became "conquest," "inquire," and "acquire."

Neruda is interested in inquiring about the nature of things, a process initiated by asking questions rooted in experience, offering us what he intuits as true and does not understand. Rather than remain in control, he submerges himself in not-knowing, in the unknowable questions that enter the imagination. The poet is intent on distinguishing between what he believes in his heart and soul (gnosis), and received patterns of thinking and feeling that limit imagination and growth."
-- William O'Daly

XXII

And if my tongue is lightning,
what monuments have I cracked?

Does the faith of the impoverished
catch the dew of the darkest dawn?

Quickly (ask your sparrow),
isn't that how hope always flies?

Won't you lie here with me
in the perfection of the unspoken?

Why, if we insisted on baggage,
did we take flight?

Bulldog, light-bulb,
gravity,
why did you deceive me?

How else to pray
if not aloud?

What rhythms were not suggested
by the depth of her hair?

Didn't a forked-tongue deliver
fate to your doorstep, as it did mine?

Isn't sense always made?

When you think of waves,
are farewells not more frequent, more swelling?

Why was I not born in a dim tenement?
Why did i grow up without speaking to God?

Who was it that plucked me from childhood?
Whose hands tore the pussywillows from my tongue?

And how many secrets
did I whisper to my calico cat?

And how many secrets
did the staircases of that house whisper?

Can't you see the spires
of the sunken city reaching from the river?

And don't you hear the river beds
sighing when we turn towards home?

Isn't the train we hear at night
the one that runs on water?

And isn't this the vessel that deposited me
upon these dark shores?

My little cat, what is she doing
away from the ocean?

You don't believe that the feline spine swishes
through tall grasses remembering the sea?

Wouldn't it be simpler to stop
dressing cats with our fear of submergence?

Why are we blind to the waves of cats
padding dutifully toward the coastline ?

Isn't one of the universe's small tragedies
the truth of how we'll never touch?

Don't you stand at the edge of desire
with a sparrow dying in your chest?

Isn't one of the universe's small truths
the tragedy of how we'll never touch?

Aren't you a sparrow at the edge of death
with desire pouring from your chest?

Why can't I orchestrate
my dreams into experiments,

thus organizing night, why shouldn't I
sleep taking notes on failure?

Would not such a practice
prove more productive

than the energy it takes me
to make mistakes all day?

Was the echo slapping through the halls
her tennis shoes or bare feet?

Who stitched the dark into blue,
embroidering evening?

And why should I speak
so often of innocence & needles?

Could my voice be more than a memory
of still green water
that had once coursed through a stone fountain...?

The callous, the scar, the lined brow,
are these less beautiful than the newborn's hand?

How it it that my body recognizes
bodies of desire before my sight does?

And that which recognizes, blindly,
what is it in the body? Which subtle tapestry of senses?

The truest love songs, do they not begin
with the words "I was changed..." ?

What else is sadness
but a sagging?

My little cat, why is she
the most marvelous comfort?

And yet, why does she seem
to care for nothing?

Have I come this distance
to love indifference?

Is Distance aware of its length?
and Absence, of its depth?

Is the train in the downpour
a metaphor of inevitability?

Can any instrument seduce
as the human voice does?

and didn't shame splinter in your hands?

Why does it seem natural
to speak to the Dead?

Does the saliva of Everyman taste
the same, like an unripened apple?

Why should heat rise
like this, lifting the white skirt?

Did she leave the pills beneath
her tongue the way a robin warms her eggs?

The first song, did it arise
from the ocean or delusion?


Why should I want to die
at Pescadero's rocky shore?


and why should that beach
be so familiar, its pelicans so comforting?


Do I not have much
in common with the candle?


Am i not as brief,
as likely to burn?

when hearts break
is it implosion or explosion?

how high does the grass have
to grow to feel at home?

why does the light
flower so on sundays?

that girl singing with her eyes closed,
could she feel anything but her voice?

How suddenly does the lone goose
realize migration's past?

Where is the safest place
for love letters? for lost toys?

Why should rivers keep their secrets?

Have you noticed yet,
what it truly is that frightens you?

are you quite sure
you're not dreaming?

does a dying man's heart flutter
fast as the heart of a dying mouse?

is there anything as blue
that rests inside the sky?

would i remain teachable
were i not consumed with desire?

How close is the word yellow
to the drowning of a bee in honey?

Doesn't the mad dog dance brilliantly
as the calf before slaughter?

And those sleepless nights,
weren't they a sturdy bridge to morning?

And the dream you imagined having,
is it not the dream you've always had?

If lies are rust,
is desire green?

Why shouldn't we applaud
the marauding tiger?

Isn't that the devil
dancing in your kitchen?

And didn't he, so sweetly, teach you
how to play the violin?