Quotes By Author: dan beachy-quick

“Poem (Internal Scene) To make beauty out of pain, it damns the eyes—No, dams the eyes. See how they overflow?No damns them, damns them, and so they cry.What shape can I swallow to make me whole?Baby’s bird-shaped block, blue-painted woodThat fits in the bird-hole of the painted wood box?The skeleton leaf? The skeleton key? LoudKnock when the shape won’t unlock any locks.I hear it through the static in the baby’s roomWhen the monitor clicks on and off, soundOf sea-ice cracking against the jagged sea-rocks,Laughing gull in the gale. What is it dives downPast sight, down there dark with the other blocks?It can’t be seen, only heard. A kind of curse,This kind curse. Forgive me. Blessing that hurts.”

“Antique FoundationHere I built the ruin inMy voice on either side of meIn the temple the ocean couldNot be a crowd I minedThe shore with fog the sun driesThese bricks I built the vision inThe cinder block that is the cityWall this graveTone I speak with a pictureOf myself in my wallet •Don’t be fooled by grass and these wordsGrass whispersBecause they are real they areRuinous Here, the gossip is in the dustNot the sea cloud enters the openChild’s window dimming the silverFlute’s sheen Where is he Who hears inside the brick those notes?There is a rumor in the city we’ll existIf he plays his song no one knows •Follow that shadow don’t tell me it’s mineHere there is no being aloneHere are my hands which tore the leaves soQuietly in the temple the godEmerging from marble points at the chiselAt the base of his stone Did I tell youWhere I’m going? To the old manWho sings the marginWhere on wave-tip swords turn edge over edgeWound us and the shore with foam •My face on either side of my face I toreMy picture in half to show the gateYou must climb inside your breath to leaveAs fog the wind will bear you—If you’re lovely—away In the spare cloudsThe children’s chorus Do you hear?—Where were you, and where are you going?Here I built the ruin in the stone-crushed Sage leaves my hands scented as long ago When I liked to press the desert against my head to think”

“Some Consequences of the Made ThingThe End. Above these words the sky closes.It closes by turning white. NotThe white of all clouds or being within a cloud.White of worldless light. The End.Feel a silence there that reminds you of a scent.Crushed grass the hooves galloped throughOr is it the binder’s glue?Some silence never not real finally can beHeard. Silence before the first words.Precedent chaos. Or marrow work.Or just the sound of the throat opening to speak.Like those scholars of pure waterWho rode through mountains and meadowsTo drink from each fresh spring a glassAnd then with brush and ink wrote poemsOn the differences of sameness,You too feel yourself taste the silent pageOf the end and the silent page of beginning.They taste so much of whiteness never moreWhite than white that’s been lost.You have some sense of the bookAltering, page sewn secretly next to page,Last page stitched to first. O, earth—It rolls around the solar scrollTurning nothing into years and years intoNothing. At The End you’re a witness to this workThat wears the witness away. And who are youAnyway. Pronoun of the 2nd person. Lover,Stranger, God. Student, Child, Shade.Something similar gathers in you.Another way of saying I in a poem—Of saying I in a poem that realizes at the endThat I am just a distance from myself.And so are you. That same distance.”