SAUNA
P.W. Elverum & Sun
Sauna
Turmoil
Dragon
Emptiness
(Something)
Boat
Planets
Pumpkin
Spring
Books
This
Youth
Sauna
Out past beyond the field inside the birches
Under rising steam: a small room
To prove I don't exist, to show that I am beyond this animal form
And this lost mind (or am I?)
The wood heats up and cracks and pulls apart the way a body groans
I transform and the stars show
I don't think the world still exists
Only this room in the snow
And the light from the coals
And only this breath
I annihilate all sensation
An abandoned breath hanging in the branches,
With the glowing core exposed,
The core exposed
Headfirst into the frozen lake
Into the lake mid-winter, cutting through all waking thoughts
In rain and wind and blanketing night
Shown at last
Standing under steam rising
My life is a small fire I carry around
Coming into a clearing
Glowing coals on the wet ground
Turmoil
In the morning it feels like coming into a clearing
And the disorientation lingers only for a breath
I hold the thought:
A coal glowing on the wet ground
Not long enough to stay in this vision
Of crawling out between the cracks in understanding
That permeate the day and tomorrow
So I make coffee while looking out the window
And notice that I can't remember when or if I woke up
All the thoughts rushing in after the thaw
Dragon
There is a veil between me and the bottomless sky
Cloud or a sheet billowing, the edge of my mind
Standing on the street in the rain
Unnamed and unknown
Only sound, assuming nothing
Seeing the echoing shape of the mammoth that tore through the brush here
A tractor idling two blocks away in the fog, unseen
And the dragon that roars now
For all I know, lost in the weather petals blow
Is this a river?
In a palace of water nothing is familiar and the ground always shakes
I dive into a pool of uncertainty
Going into the basement again
I reach down beneath the human
Emptiness
"More emptiness" I said "and more, and more"
When someone asked me what was in my bag
I said "more emptiness"
Where the house is not is where the room is
The rest of the volcano is sky
"More emptiness" again "and more, and more"
But what about the lives that we have lived
and all the buildings and poems we made?
I see you
We are two black holes in the vast night,
A van in neutral rolling down a hill unoccupied
"More emptiness" again "and more, and more"
I stood next to the river and threw a large sheet of glass as far as I could in
The way the water was cut in two,
The sword in the sky,
Was mind only forming this one thought:
Emptiness
(Something)
(Instrumental)
Boat
I was born out of nowhere
And back to nowhere I'll return
But for now the river next to the house,
The river inside the house, and a person's form
Disconnected and drifting in my boat
I built this boat on the shore
I pushed it into the waves and was born
In this boat blown across the north
Another island appears and then goes
Mind only, plus the ocean and my boat
There's no way I will be able
To ever step outside of my boat
Planets
As long as I am drawing breath the world still exists
But when I die everything will vanish
The two of us are planets crashing through separate lives
With my eye, every shape created
I don't know you and you never will know me
From inside my bubble I think I see you while you smile and yawn
Pumpkin
In the middle of November, smashed on the rocks
At the edge of the island, a bright thing caught my eye
It was a pumpkin half
I walked to the bookstore in a rain that silently filled the air
All the lights in the world were off or dim
And there was nothing to do but walk to town and back
In every ordinary moment
Looking at trash on the ground by the bulldozers in the dusk
I forget myself and see universes forming
Pulled back out from a dream of rolling landscapes,
I face the moment
Looking at garbage
Pretending the wind speaks
Finding meaning in songs
But the wind through the graves is just wind
Crawling over the wet rocks with dark sand in my shoes
To where the orange pumpkin I found cracked open in the waves,
Its emptiness loose
Spring
Mind like a flower
A flower falling
A candle in the basement
Nothing is real but there is a spring inside
Waves breaking still reflect the moon
I erase myself and songs echo
Mind is an ocean
Thoughts are its waves breaking
Awake at dawn, thoughts unformed
Before I remember where I am
The clear universe is shown
A spring opens up
Mind like a flower falling
Blooming only to be blown
Born across the sky unknown
Living life as if it's not a passing animal dream
A poem
A brief shelter seen as home
Mind like a falling flower
Like a wide ocean reflecting whatever
On its dark waves in rows unclear
Unending thoughts distorting the only moon
The light from nowhere
Beneath all this, the liquid stone
Beneath the fountains and the road
All solid things I'm shown
A pool of placid water pours in the windows
And nothing is impermeable
The basement's flooded
The walls are groaning in the wind
I leap beyond all this into the water at night
The spring keeps opening wide
Books
Awake again
Returning to this
Where I am with my finger in between pages
Where, written down 1000 years before now:
I tear the North Sea
This
I tear in dreams across the North Sea
Or I travel mentally wild through all million thoughts the mind sings
No
Only this
And from each "this" I crawl entangled
Into this
Pulled out through the window
I blink and I'm gone again
Leaping beyond this while still alive,
This candle glowing
Shrieking across the dark sky
I see you through the snow and I'm gone
Into the spring
All in my mind
Back to this specific spot in the river in spring thaw
With all dreams burning off as if lightning has struck here,
I hold this
Youth
I look through the big windows at the airport again
Far from home, 2014
Disconnected and young
In my bag, a book of Zen poems that I read and reread
They all say: "Don't worry. Dreamed dust is always blowing. All this is a veil."
The veil of youth is lifting in me constantly
Far from home again
While everything is born by my eye
Only now and this: airport window and whatever I see
The dissolving youth of things is shown as emptiness dressed up as spring
All million colors and everyone I've known
Passing through a mind
And it's this same mind that was born wild and empty,
Wailing in electric lights since birth
Far from home at last and I'm still trying to let the spring emerge
From beneath every thought, unknown and vast
But my youth and self-assurance fill the sky
"There's no moon," my young mind thinks, "in a totally black night sky"
But there is a moon
Sauna
Turmoil
Dragon
Emptiness
(Something)
Boat
Planets
Pumpkin
Spring
Books
This
Youth
Sauna
Out past beyond the field inside the birches
Under rising steam: a small room
To prove I don't exist, to show that I am beyond this animal form
And this lost mind (or am I?)
The wood heats up and cracks and pulls apart the way a body groans
I transform and the stars show
I don't think the world still exists
Only this room in the snow
And the light from the coals
And only this breath
I annihilate all sensation
An abandoned breath hanging in the branches,
With the glowing core exposed,
The core exposed
Headfirst into the frozen lake
Into the lake mid-winter, cutting through all waking thoughts
In rain and wind and blanketing night
Shown at last
Standing under steam rising
My life is a small fire I carry around
Coming into a clearing
Glowing coals on the wet ground
Turmoil
In the morning it feels like coming into a clearing
And the disorientation lingers only for a breath
I hold the thought:
A coal glowing on the wet ground
Not long enough to stay in this vision
Of crawling out between the cracks in understanding
That permeate the day and tomorrow
So I make coffee while looking out the window
And notice that I can't remember when or if I woke up
All the thoughts rushing in after the thaw
Dragon
There is a veil between me and the bottomless sky
Cloud or a sheet billowing, the edge of my mind
Standing on the street in the rain
Unnamed and unknown
Only sound, assuming nothing
Seeing the echoing shape of the mammoth that tore through the brush here
A tractor idling two blocks away in the fog, unseen
And the dragon that roars now
For all I know, lost in the weather petals blow
Is this a river?
In a palace of water nothing is familiar and the ground always shakes
I dive into a pool of uncertainty
Going into the basement again
I reach down beneath the human
Emptiness
"More emptiness" I said "and more, and more"
When someone asked me what was in my bag
I said "more emptiness"
Where the house is not is where the room is
The rest of the volcano is sky
"More emptiness" again "and more, and more"
But what about the lives that we have lived
and all the buildings and poems we made?
I see you
We are two black holes in the vast night,
A van in neutral rolling down a hill unoccupied
"More emptiness" again "and more, and more"
I stood next to the river and threw a large sheet of glass as far as I could in
The way the water was cut in two,
The sword in the sky,
Was mind only forming this one thought:
Emptiness
(Something)
(Instrumental)
Boat
I was born out of nowhere
And back to nowhere I'll return
But for now the river next to the house,
The river inside the house, and a person's form
Disconnected and drifting in my boat
I built this boat on the shore
I pushed it into the waves and was born
In this boat blown across the north
Another island appears and then goes
Mind only, plus the ocean and my boat
There's no way I will be able
To ever step outside of my boat
Planets
As long as I am drawing breath the world still exists
But when I die everything will vanish
The two of us are planets crashing through separate lives
With my eye, every shape created
I don't know you and you never will know me
From inside my bubble I think I see you while you smile and yawn
Pumpkin
In the middle of November, smashed on the rocks
At the edge of the island, a bright thing caught my eye
It was a pumpkin half
I walked to the bookstore in a rain that silently filled the air
All the lights in the world were off or dim
And there was nothing to do but walk to town and back
In every ordinary moment
Looking at trash on the ground by the bulldozers in the dusk
I forget myself and see universes forming
Pulled back out from a dream of rolling landscapes,
I face the moment
Looking at garbage
Pretending the wind speaks
Finding meaning in songs
But the wind through the graves is just wind
Crawling over the wet rocks with dark sand in my shoes
To where the orange pumpkin I found cracked open in the waves,
Its emptiness loose
Spring
Mind like a flower
A flower falling
A candle in the basement
Nothing is real but there is a spring inside
Waves breaking still reflect the moon
I erase myself and songs echo
Mind is an ocean
Thoughts are its waves breaking
Awake at dawn, thoughts unformed
Before I remember where I am
The clear universe is shown
A spring opens up
Mind like a flower falling
Blooming only to be blown
Born across the sky unknown
Living life as if it's not a passing animal dream
A poem
A brief shelter seen as home
Mind like a falling flower
Like a wide ocean reflecting whatever
On its dark waves in rows unclear
Unending thoughts distorting the only moon
The light from nowhere
Beneath all this, the liquid stone
Beneath the fountains and the road
All solid things I'm shown
A pool of placid water pours in the windows
And nothing is impermeable
The basement's flooded
The walls are groaning in the wind
I leap beyond all this into the water at night
The spring keeps opening wide
Books
Awake again
Returning to this
Where I am with my finger in between pages
Where, written down 1000 years before now:
I tear the North Sea
This
I tear in dreams across the North Sea
Or I travel mentally wild through all million thoughts the mind sings
No
Only this
And from each "this" I crawl entangled
Into this
Pulled out through the window
I blink and I'm gone again
Leaping beyond this while still alive,
This candle glowing
Shrieking across the dark sky
I see you through the snow and I'm gone
Into the spring
All in my mind
Back to this specific spot in the river in spring thaw
With all dreams burning off as if lightning has struck here,
I hold this
Youth
I look through the big windows at the airport again
Far from home, 2014
Disconnected and young
In my bag, a book of Zen poems that I read and reread
They all say: "Don't worry. Dreamed dust is always blowing. All this is a veil."
The veil of youth is lifting in me constantly
Far from home again
While everything is born by my eye
Only now and this: airport window and whatever I see
The dissolving youth of things is shown as emptiness dressed up as spring
All million colors and everyone I've known
Passing through a mind
And it's this same mind that was born wild and empty,
Wailing in electric lights since birth
Far from home at last and I'm still trying to let the spring emerge
From beneath every thought, unknown and vast
But my youth and self-assurance fill the sky
"There's no moon," my young mind thinks, "in a totally black night sky"
But there is a moon