A Found Poem From The Films of Paul Thomas Anderson

“The Shape of What Remains”

I have so much love to give.
I just don’t know where to put it.

I don’t know what kind of girl I am.
I don’t know what kind of man I am.
Sometimes I think I’ve forgotten how to be a person.

Then you came along,
and I felt something
I didn’t know I could feel.
That has to mean something.

I can’t imagine life without you—
but I still don’t know how to live with you.
Connection feels like pressure.
Connection feels like grace.

There’s a part of you
you haven’t met yet.
It’s the part that keeps trying.

Everything is connected,
but I don’t feel connected.
I’ve lost people.
I’ve lost time.
Now I lose myself
a little more each day.

I want to know you
the way the sea knows the moon—
even as it pulls away,
it never stops reflecting light.

This is the part where you reach for my hand,
but only in your mind.
In real life, we both just sit there,
close,
almost touching.

You don’t choose the things you believe in.
They choose you.
But what if they stop choosing?

People don’t always tell you how they feel.
But they show you,
in the quiet.

If you leave,
I’ll forget how to breathe right.
If you stay,
I’ll have to remember how to be whole.

I miss who I was
when I didn’t know so much.
But maybe
this is who I am now.

Some love is soft.
Some love is a decision.
Some love
is the silence
between the words
we never said.

This is the part where we let go
without ever having held on.

Bloomsday – June 16, 2023

A day in the life
From the morning’s first inklings
Ending with kindness,
Patience,
Forbearance,
And with such comfort and equanimity,
Wandering through life’s many twists and turns,
Perhaps thinking you’re escaping, but run into yourself.

Love loves to love love.
Walking through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love,
Always meeting ourselves,
To remain humble to learn.

To awaken from a vision as to be born.
Can’t bring back time. Like holding water in your hand.
Can’t change the world, but we can change the subject.

Thought is the thought of thought.
Me. 
And me now.
Be just before you are generous.
Be kind always.
Even in the darkness of your soul,
A darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not comprehend;
As I am. As I am. All or not at all.
…and yes I said yes I will Yes.

Nothing But Experience

Uncommon gestures and embroiled accidents,

Suggestions and half truths,

The rush to be home before dark,

Anything you don’t do yourself

Is hard to handle.


The fiction of our lives resembles dreams,

The importance of fighting for miracles.

There’s a lunatic pride in accepting that

It all starts with nothing but experience,

And for some,

A rich imagination.


Nothing?


Except being

Encumbered by crashing waves of

Chaos,

Conflict, 

Desires.


It doesn’t make any difference.

Shoulder the belief that 

when you escape your past

You’re not about to return voluntarily.

You’re not who you think you are.


Realize the number of imponderables in life.

And,

If nothing else,

Start with the glory of a summer evening by the ocean.

Flats

Start with the Hand Jive:

Slap both hands twice on your knees.
Raise your hands chest high, spread your fingers apart.
Hold the left hand above and parallel to the right hand.
Slide the left hand over the right hand and then reverse the process.
Pound your left fist twice on your right fist.
Pound your right fist on your left fist.
Touch your left elbow twice with your right hand.
Touch your right elbow twice with your left hand.

And so I say:

Been moving too long and not far enough
Behind there is a vacuous angle of an arbitrary turn
Close to the bone my senses are attuned to changes
Crawling into my own original space, I cannot remember any of the places I have been through
Distinctions pile up and run over each other
Effect has long since been separated from cause
Fatigue strangles my concentration
Hearing a joke I laugh with the downtown side of my mouth
I accept my words without attachment
I am here now and that’s where I’m looking, straight ahead, standing here, at this time
I am on top of my own collapse, riding it down like a freight elevator
I am thrown into a solitude of numbers
I distrust emotions that come directly from words
I don't want to become involved in priorities
I don’t pay attention
I feel the urge to create signals and signs
I have no intentions
I have no questions or thoughts, only the momentum braced and conditioned by a future turn
I have no sense of having come from somewhere or that I am, indeed, going anywhere
I have to keep these words moving to hide the emptiness

Overhead a blue light. Blinked twice.
An engine droned.

I haven’t gazed at the sky in years
I hear voices but don’t have the curiosity to distinguish individual words, preferring the hum
I need a haven to ensure myself a static interlude, a place where I won’t have to talk to myself
I need a task to give a focus, to prevent distractions 
I would have preferred not to get into this
I would rather forget about time, wrapping myself into oblivion, if need be
I would rather maneuver among the politics of displacement
I'm open to a greater line
I’m not too well wrapped
I’m not trying to retrace my steps or find a guide
I’m played out
I’m trying to realize a focus before everything fades  or changes too fast
In front there is the same proposition
It doesn’t matter that I have become inaccessible
It is a relief not to know where I have to go
Listen, I’m just trying to get through the night
Motives are hard to come by when the issues have discintigrated
Names and places move around me as well as inside of me
Never mind the map. The terrain doesn’t matter. You take what you can get
Not for relief, for balance, I need to state a resolution

Overhead a blue light. Blinked twice.
An engine droned.

Nothing picks up, nothing rushes forward toward an exclamation or conclusion
On top of my own collapse, I ride it down like a freight elevator
Perhaps this prepares me for the murder of my own solutions
Somewhere, in one of us, control lurks
Surely I know how to move through space without attaching myself to local definitions
The horizon is limited
There are moments when I’ve lost control, when I became too oblique even to myself
There are no more voices
There are no reminders, no hidden move with which to trip me back into the past
There is an emptiness I am unable to fill
There is no problem so there is no solution
There is no transition, beginnings having happened somewhere else
These last moments hint toward consequences
They comfort me when comfort is impossible 
This is my own stumble through the night
To invent a problem is quite a shuck
When you come to the end of it you come to the end of it
Yet there is danger
You go as far as you can and then you don’t go anymore

And so it begins again…

Phrases found and collected from Flats by Rudolph Wurlitzer

Hole Theory

Absences speak volumes:
Cut-outs, pin-pricks, voids-
All full of potential.

Imagining nothing
Instead of something,
Leaving space for projections,
Forwards and backwards
In time.

There is the paradox
Of the hole,
From absence to importance.
But ask yourself:
Is the hole 
something,
Or nothing
At all?

Sashaying to the Holey alter:
The hipster sez:
Lack is where it’s at.

And did the guy who postulated:
In the hole,
The Universe
Drew itself,
Earn a Ph. D?

The philosopher inquires:
With holes, 
when does nothing
Become something?

How about something from an
Obscure law book in an imaginary land:
The hole is meant to obliterate,
But instead
It draws attention
Like water down
The
Drain.

And the rest of us might wonder:
When does lack
Lose its negative
Connotation to become
An affront?

Or maybe not.

Fullness 
and 
Emptiness

Through these holes flows
The air we breathe.

Hopes and Other Misses

The man with his fetish, like a baby with its blanket, has security
Fooled by the dribble of worry and waste
Voices berate me into making up stories that just don’t fly
While the moon-eyed girl blossoms in the scattered moments of jubilation
Hope never leaves you alone
I wish I were full of donuts rather than existential dread

The man with his fetish, like a baby with its blanket, has security  
Fooled by the dribble of worry and waste
Voices berate me into making up stories that just don’t fly 
While the moon-eyed girl blossoms in the scattered moments of jubilation

Fooled by the dribble of worry and waste
Hope never leaves you alone  
While the moon-eyed girl blossoms in the scattered moments of jubilation
I wish I were full of donuts rather than existential dread 

Hope never leaves you alone
Voices berate me into making up stories that just don’t fly 
I wish I were full of donuts rather than existential dread 
The man with his fetish, like a baby with its blanket, has security

Canine Precocity

In the fine art of dog play
Below the waist has its own set of values
Special messages revealed by babies, dogs and drunks
Always attempting to see what’s besides, behind, and beyond
Spontaneous messages of irrational knowledge
Delusions are usually necessary to get through life

In the fine art of dog play
Below the waist has its own set of values
Special messages revealed by babies, dogs and drunks
Always attempting to see what’s besides, behind, and beyond 

Below the waist has its own set of values
Spontaneous messages of irrational knowledge  
Always attempting to see what’s besides, behind, and beyond
Delusions are usually necessary to get through life 

Spontaneous messages of irrational knowledge 
Special messages revealed by babies, dogs and drunks 
Delusions are usually necessary to get through life
In the fine art of dog play

Some Damn Thing

I like to make things that hold your attention for awhile
Turbulent romanticism wears like a little black dress in a hurricane
A sense of absurdity, improvised and genuine 
That surrealistic pose confronting the vicissitudes of some damn thing
Frenetic breathing of passion and caprice
Multiple possibilities for self-differentiation

I like to make things that hold your attention for awhile
Turbulent romanticism wears like a little black dress in a hurricane
A sense of absurdity, improvised and genuine
That surrealistic pose confronting the vicissitudes of some damn thing  

Turbulent romanticism wears like a little black dress in a hurricane
Frenetic breathing of passion and caprice
That surrealistic pose confronting the vicissitudes of some damn thing 
Multiple possibilities for self-differentiation 

Frenetic breathing of passion and caprice 
A sense of absurdity, improvised and genuine
Multiple possibilities for self-differentiation 
I like to make things that hold your attention for awhile.

Beat

My mind is a pocketful of loose change
Dirt in the fuel line, cabbage growing in my ears
What is freedom and to whom does it belong?
I don’t trust my skills wrangling unrelated stimuli,
Emancipating myself from the flypaper of bogus philosophies
Yet at the gas station of love I get the self-service pump

My mind is a pocketful of loose change
Dirt in the fuel line, cabbage growing in my ears
What is freedom and to whom does it belong?
I don’t trust my skills wrangling unrelated stimuli,

Dirt in the fuel line, cabbage growing in my ears
Emancipating myself from the flypaper of bogus philosophies  
I don’t trust my skills wrangling unrelated stimuli,
Yet at the gas station of love I get the self-service pump

Emancipating myself from the flypaper of bogus philosophies
What is freedom and to whom does it belong?
Yet at the gas station of love I get the self-service pump
My mind is a pocketful of loose change

In & Out

Garbage in, garbage out - Common knowledge
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over — Fudd's First Law of Opposition 
It’s like having bees live in your head
So many variables creating a chaotic, indecipherable mess
Sometimes I amaze myself, and other times I can’t remember what day it is
In a cow pasture watch where you step.


Garbage in, garbage out - Common knowledge
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over — Fudd's First Law of Opposition 
It’s like having bees live in your head
So many variables creating a chaotic, indecipherable mess.  

If you push something hard enough, it will fall over — Fudd's First Law of Opposition
Sometimes I amaze myself, and other times I can’t remember what day it is  
So many variables creating a chaotic, indecipherable mess 
In a cow pasture watch where you step 

Sometimes I amaze myself, and other times I can’t remember what day it is 
It’s like having bees live in your head 
In a cow pasture watch where you step 
Garbage in, garbage out - Common knowledge