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CAVEATS & COMPLAINTS BY DANIEL McCASOWAY SELECTED FRAGMENTS
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9 Just a little feeling on an average day - the kind that sparrows have toward the end of May. 13 Are we possibilities emphasized by infinity, or are we certainties adrift in emptiness? 24 Sparrows dip when the wind is crisp. Larks rush straight on through. Hawks ponder ere they risk. Doves are content to coo. 35 Sunrise of my heart – sunset of my soul, midnight of despair. I cannot sleep. A fire burns within. My battle is fire. 38 Some odd, glorious illness or visceral hesitation browses amid my curious passions, caught in the turbulent swirl – the supple current about her velvet cape, bending there o’er each vale and promontory, doubt lulls as my torch cuts on into the fog.
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42 The metallurgists forged her golden heart. Angels built her wings. Her radiance lights my dimmest reaches, her incense triggers electric sparks at every outpost of my soul. 48 I was an eagle once, I’m sure. I remember the feel of the air - the subtle musk of blood-soaked hair. My grip was death. Now life slips away so leisurely. 49 I watched the clouds today - in a movie that made me cry. They were just like the clouds we have. 63 There was ice over there - and all the colors came. Words, screeching words - each without a name. 70 O’ how warmer mercy seems somewhere else - we took time to mete its suffering more slowly. Yet we never knew what time might take.
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76 Somebody bumped into this place. We saw where they came through - but we did not see them. (It was us.) 81 Madness seems imminent today. Peace, an unquantified property - stillness sits someplace else. 84 A city of poets - dreamers within a dream - 98 Rain needs the soil to want it - so clouds must tease the earth with their rude, foggy foreplay. 100 Let my poets go! Tear down this wall! 101 To know what takes us someday - to hear rain nudge the timid night - to see the reasons some men dim. 103 I have my limits - yet there are the infinities. 118 Fibers of me - broken, frayed fibers. The lines on her face were a map to Hell. 124 Whose futility am I living now? Shoot us both.
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128 She cut my heart out - just like she said she would. I suppose that’s what happens when a cadaver loves a surgeon. 143 Each of us knows an evil. It’s okay to speak on the street - but never go for a ride in the convertible. 147 Send in the prophets - the future is coming early. 157 Secrets seem to share an address. This was the house that held my closets. 173 They asked me if I ever killed a man. I told them the truth. They let me go. 177 I was a word uttered once by her - there’s a sound in the Sun’s rays: it was like that. She talked about the City of Rainbows like she had been there. She used my word in this speech. Does anyone hear the silence of these eternal last days? 180 Words speak to each other in our minds. They are the ideas. We are the armatures they animate. 190 A breath between papers: we are the words. 205 We all see traces - some are the size of a universe. 214 Her long August showed me how summer is merely a hastening match in the winter’s steady breeze. 222 There is a ghost in here. It is us. 223 The gentle patter of 9-millimeter on the roof can provide a certain calming effect. But sometimes a siren triggers old rage. I felt her heart pounding through the bullet-proof glass. 224 If we weren’t here, would we know it? Yes. Because if we couldn’t, we wouldn’t know we aren’t everywhere. 227 She read me to a muttering crowd. But just hearing me in her voice was all that mattered. 228 There will be other pages - and they’ll write themselves - just like ours did. 229 We spread our poison, sure, but name a rat-killer who doesn’t. 236 There are voices in here. I merely have to find some who don’t mind being heard. 242 Some incense seems, seems like the times I dreamed - dreamed of her.
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252 He was one of the damned nomads nobody ever remembered. 253 I didn’t want to be written this way - there’s some of us you’ll never write. 254 Human Nature urges gestures to Her. 258 we confine big ideas poverty they took our days a sprained heart silence some calm blades, many blades I don’t know why either 259 we wept as we waited and then the fall came there is no reverse in this chariot 261 We were the nobodies that they left behind. 262 Somewhere between these rooms, at the surface of a thought, I become me by speaking to myself. 266 I keep dreaming I’m reaching out. It’s a futility peculiar to amputees. 268 ribbons of fear welcome to the highway world nobody seems to know what's getting cut out here on the cutting edge if you don't like it here just stand still nobody can live on the cutting edge houses can't have feet the anger and fatigue of bones bent backwards photos of a rat box a standard of absurdity you can't go home when you're always there
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272 we are the nuclei there is no redemption each tick of a clock every beat of a heart is a hammer blow with its own serial number that leaves a permanent scar with its own serial number 281 both are in here, I know that now but thank-God I’m the one who speaks 283 Coil of despair, a return of old things, three windy nights in a row. If there was a wonder then it is here. Something about the quiet now – the play of weeds along the road. Out here all alone and don’t matter. Let this go west. Help the wind sing, cold, restless moon. 289 How many are we left over from? 294 we hated people who hated themselves and they hated us 297 we’re somebody’s things that got away
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