4 or 5 Estimations

City Sources. I’m hungry claimed one voice (back there)

Here, are newer etchings. Stroll appealed. Chose the lanes.

Steel. Gas. Drivers. His wanting to be – “right there” – how?

Easy to say Future, a hard point to pinpoint

That is, how’d you get from Hillcrest to the Bayfront?

Bread. Slowness: not barefoot as there’s too much smashed glass

Equals, shoes, purchased, and so forth, what’s perceiving?

Now’s a sea gull. Flew. By. And so forth. Now’s a fence.

There is no out, once an out becomes a question.

Pants aren’t purchased, pants are sown, How do you fit – in.

Forms – faces, not chosen, mark honesty? get real –

Will mean, How have you got – by. Corn, chilies, barley

Subsidized lyrics as in your puffy schools, pray

What does take mean, docks unloading, who inspects what?

I’m a doormat talking as if I’m a kingpin.

There’s my world down there. Bull – crap. What inspects who, Group

Bellies, gonads, eyeballs, creatures of the light, speak.

I feel mis-placed, a non-self spoke – estimations?

*

Greenish oily wavelets, bouncing yellow lights – gleam

Look different from far away, spread out, than they now

At this shore, words groping, shall all wenden to nought.

Nevertheless, pier 39, serves as a stage

For a one who’s bundled in a cotton jacket

Placid, cold, among the warmness of such absence

Wedged between hope and dread, has revealed a...[gropes for]

Wood, remains countered by wood, in all its forms – is?

Wedged between earth and sky, has become a non-being

Always already something else: soil, pine, pier, stage.

So that ships, floating upon forced economies

Which like to view themselves as random, casual – gleam

Also, from whence came this single existential

Is bobbing on till Other Metaphoric Needs

Intersect it, other determinate moments

Clash, which means, until another person comes by –

For, estimations of contradictions – “a chat”

I’d of asked one, but they had something else to do.

*

Palm interrupts moon, though moon has little to tell.

Dredged-up rock doubted jagged. Crabs would be knowledge.

Fear, the untenderness of train carts for miles, screech.

And everything is not trauma, you young gothics.

Slow, the stomach of the city digests old signs

Or the unharmonious blacksmith of night, hums.

Furthermore, Genuine Butter (carton) empty

Strikes a nerve. Which one, could be a six month project

Or an immediate result, unfettered, flies –

Somewhere else to be, somewhere else to be, twitching

Someone else to be [Club Artaud, I laugh at this]

The climb – into the ground. Holds on to what? A now

Estimates a new arm, a Happening History.

Without Love or Hate unable to modulate

That feverish moment – who’s heard spoken about?

Illych said one lives more then than in all one’s life.

So the analogy went, as others permute.

That all imparities and lacks won’t fuse, have to.

*

Mornings. Because how else do nights define – passage.

Routine. Shapes compelling. Skip the tired urban themes.

Paint chipped off the curbs, tires ran over them, ground dust –

Is packed into corners, crevices, – I...why try?

And at the umpteenth hour, estimate, such values.

He, could puke, but he don’t like that, as if like meant

Means squat. Welcome, to the festival of privilege

Sometimes morning sickness for who’s pregnant – with death.

This also a testament to cable tv.

And it all shouldn’t matter because all things stop.

And it all shouldn’t matter because it goes on.

And it all shouldn’t matter because you can’t be.

And it all shouldn’t matter because you have been.

And it all shouldn’t matter because you might be.

And it all shouldn’t matter because you won’t know.

And it all shouldn’t matter because it’s so much.

And it all shouldn’t matter because – everything.

*

After the reflective sheen of the harbor’s tints

An attempt to, about, comes from, it a cover

Merely? After the rhapsodic interlude – shed.

Before the closing gap between you and others

High noon began by strapping on its boots to romp

And lord do the people suffer in war-time (he

Wouldn’t know it, yet doesn’t care to know it, soon.)

De l’horizon d’un seul a l’horizon de tous

Wrote Eluard in ’48 (who’s groping here – grafts)

Would require kindness, not as a mass campaign, yet

Not as a not toward one either. Because it has

Might matter: phrases, buckets, slogans, verses, gruel.

And as the century’s deep scarring seem to linger

(There, where he was, less railing to hold on to – climb

Down, a symptom of the times, it said, signing class)

A life’s capacity for struggle – Estimate

Amid analogies of silence, rupture, touch.

Tall orders in the late day, tired stamina spoke

It’s becoming less obvious Which words trace which deeds

Cares. Perquè amb una altra cosa no n’hi hagué prou. Sorolls
Els Recursos de la Ciutat. Tinc gana, va clamar una veu (allà darrere)
Ací, els gravats són més nous. M’abellia una passejada. Trieu els carrils.
Acer. Benzina. Conductors. El seu voler estar  “allí mateix”, com?
És fàcil dir Futur, un punt difícil de localizar
És a dir, com aniries des del cim de la muntanya fins a primera línia de la badia?
Pa. Lentitud: però no descalç, que hi ha massa vidres trencats
Iguals, sabates, comprades, etcètera, què percep?
Ara és una gavina. Ha volat. De llarg. Etcètera. Ara és una tanca.
No hi ha eixida, una vegada que el fora esdevé una pregunta.
Els pantalons no es compren. Estan plantats, com fas per a cabre-hi?
Formes: les cares, no elegides, mostren sinceritat? Siguem seriosos  –
Voldran dir: cómo t’ho has apanyat. Dacsa, pebrots, ordi
Lletres de cançons subvencionades com en les vostres inflades escoles, reseu
Què significa agafar, descarregar els ports, qui inspecciona què?
Sóc un pelut que parla com si fos una eminència
Allà baix hi ha el meu món. Bajanades. Què inspecciona a qui, un grup
De panxes, gònades, globus oculars, criatures de la llum, parleu.
Em sent descol·locat, un radi alienat: valoracions?

*

Petites ones verdoses i olioses, que fan rebotar llums grogues: lluïssor
De lluny semblen diferents, desplegades, del que són ara
En aquesta riba, grapejant paraules, totes condueixen a res
Tanmateix, moll 39, fa el paper d’escenari
Per a algú que està arraulit en una jaqueta de cotó
Tranquil, fred, entre la calidesa d’una tal absència
Encallat entre esperança i terror, ha revelat un... [busca a les palpentes]
Fusta, continua sent rebatuda per la fusta, en totes les seues formes – no?
Encallat entre cel i terra, s’ha convertit en un no-ser
Sempre, de fet, una altra cosa:: terra, pi, moll, escenari.
Per tal que els vaixells, flotant sobre les economies forçoses
Que s’agraden de contemplar-se a elles mateixes com a informals, a l’atzar: lluïssor
A més, d’on vingué aquest acte únic i existencial,
És una forma residual d’un passat social
Continua capficant fins que Altres Necessitats Metafòriques
El tallen, d’altres moments concrets hi
Xoquen, és a dir, fins que una altra persona es presente –
Per a, valoracions o contradiccions:  "una xarrada"
Jo n’hauria demanat una, però tenien altres coses a fer.

*
 

Rodrigo Toscano va nàixer a San Diego, Califòrnia, el 1964. Hi va viure fins als 25 anys (tret d’un any passat als deserts del sud-oest fent de camioner). El 1995 es va traslladar a San Francisco i hi va viure quatre anys, com a treballador social, a banda de ser un destacat activista laboral. Durant  aquest temps va fundar, juntament amb Jocelyn Saindenberg i Hung Q. Tu, Krupskaya Press. Després es va traslladar a Brooklyn (Greenpoint) amb la poeta i assagista Laura Elrick, on viu actualment. Treballa al Labor Institute de Manhattan, i continua avalotant, estimulant, enfurismant i a voltes desconcertant els seus amics (i fins i tot a ell mateix) i els diversors intrusos que es deixen caure en lectures de poesia, raó per la qual no para de seqüenciar paraules i declamar aquestes seqüències en públic. És l’autor de Platform (Atelos, 2003), The Diparities (Green Integer, 2002) i Partisans (O Books, 1999). Recentment,  la seua obra ha aparegut en Perspektive 43+44, “Avantgarde Under Net Conditions” (Alemanya), Kenning Audi Editions, Rattapallax núm. 9, “Recent Brazilian and American Poetry”.