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Belief

Christopher Nelson

All seeds1 are dangerous

              are cataclysm are

              a daring dart2 God let

              fly

On a wind that has no

              end

              (when could it

              cease?)

              this fantastic3

              flailing4 mind5 I

Love everything I’ve been even though

              I thought I hated

              myself in my

              suitcase of knives

              where a slit

Of light kept me

              coming6 to you or

              for you I am and

              other such

              mythologies

Compass plant and thrice-blooméd

              hog weed you

              can be tonight

              (in this

              almost unseeable)

              my way7

How the neglected part of him

              takes as his

              own the dream

              and rises till

              near bursting8 with only a

              mere

              sheet

              between

He and all that’s possible9



  1. weed, wind seed, wind shear, blood, bleed, idea, ideation, creation, cremation↵

    2.  

  2. The sharper the point the less the pain; the piercer and the pierced↵

    3.  

  3. phantastikos: able to imagine
    phantazesthai: picture to oneself
    fantasticus: a lunatic↵

    4.  

  4. fail, sail, whip, the whipper and the whipped, whop, whoop, whoopee, woops, thresh, thrash, thrush, flagil, vlegel, flagellum, flagellate; flak and flare — “I want me sum.”↵

    5.  

  5. mynd, gemynd, gamundiz, muns (thought), munan, minni, Minne (archaic love), rind, find, kind, unkind, to lose one’s ___, to lose it; I’m losing you. Hello? Hey? Sup? I’m here, I’m still here, where we left me all along the throng and alone. ↵

    6.  

  6. come to, come on over, come on, come again, come off, come in, come out, come around to, come up with, have it coming, come right down to it, cum, new comer, late comer, cuman, kuma, comen, komen, queman, kommen, koma, coma, comma, common, commoner, keep it coming; c.f., some, monk, tongue, worm↵

    7.  

  7. dào, dō (e.g., judo: way of the fist; the gentle way), waylaid, by the wayside //
    ESTRAGON (coldly):
    There are times when I wonder if it wouldn’t be better for us to part.

    VLADIMIR:
    You wouldn’t go far.

    ESTRAGON:
    That would be too bad, really too bad. (Pause.) Wouldn’t it, Didi, be really too bad? (Pause.) When you think of the beauty of the way. (Pause.) And the goodness of the wayfarers. (Pause. Wheedling.) Wouldn’t it, Didi?↵

    8.  

  8. as a matter of course, you run
    from the darkness of the night and there is no hyperbolizing
    light the finding of it, then
    as a matter of course, you realize
    the darkness is inside you↵

    9.  

  9. that which may take place or come into being↵

 

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