Collecting Holub's words

The Old People's Garden


Malignant growth of ivy.
And unkempt grass, 
because it no longer matters.
Beneath the trees an invasion
of fruitful Gothic.
Dusk had fallen, mythological 
and toothless.


But the Minotaur beat it
through a hole in the fence.
The Icaruses were caught
somewhere in spiders' webs.


In the dawn's early light
the disrespectfully grey, insolent
frontal bone of fact
is revealed.
And it yawns without word.


Miroslav Holub, from Poems Before and After

Holub

On Sisyphus

Unable to roll up that boulder,
that boulder or whatever it was, maybe gneiss, maybe paper
I decided the fault lay with me.
The important thing about faults is that they can be corrected,
my mother used to say.


I decided the fault lay with me.
So I added to the boulder
as much weight again.  Whatever it was,
maybe hate, maybe love.
And at once it went better.  Because


of the certainty that it would
probably break my neck.


Then came the tea-break.
And I realised
that hysteria doesn't solve anything.


from Miroslav Holub Poems Before and After

Contemplating the combinations

apart; without
the breaking apart
in the shape of a half moon


pertaining to the mouth
conveying sweat
resembling bone


empty
voice
blood vessel narrowing


a small abcess
a softening of muscle
slanting


to split open
an enlargement of the heart
following birth


fire; cautery
absence of the sensation of pain
the swallowing of air


root
out of   carrying away from the center
toward the near end


within a wall
a burning sensation of the tongue
a cutting into the abdomen

Burning text

Welcome

to this new, more open space.


thoughts on the process.... what process?  all of it.

A "haiku" installation

more concretely forming...


a table of onions...red?  in a pile, in a grid?
an invisible fan, in motion, moving their skins
the sound of water rushing, from hidden speakers, emanating from under the tabletop


and these words...somewhere...
sorrow breathes into 
tight spaces that lie waiting
river tumbles on