David Koehn
Quatern: Spinoza in Exile XV
“Abasement consists in thinking too meanly of oneself through sorrow.”
— Ethics, Part III, Definition of the Affects, Definition 28
Who purchased my desk auctioned off after my death?
Who kept my secret, unsent love letters to Enden a secret?
Who knew Descartes had the plan for the plan for the plan?
Did they find the flower tattooed under my tongue, inscribed “caute.”
Did the flash of lightning and crack of thunder anger them?
Who purchased my desk auctioned off after my death?
Did they count the books in my collection? All 160 of them?
The lens can’t be polished until made green. Kindness
Radicalizes the accent around the word: its animal.
Crabs in sand etch out the sound that makes the verb “ to write.”
Who purchased my desk auctioned off after my death?
In the syllables of your mouth, in “mouth” the syllable,
Opening to “muþ” - beasts reside in the organs Leibniz.
You feel not god but the bestiary amok in the diaphanous.
My landlord has locked me in my room, who pays my rent?
Who purchased my desk auctioned off after my death?
Quatern: Spinoza in Exile XX
“The greatest evil is that which we imagine.”
— Ethics, Part IV, Proposition 63 (Scholium)
His voice like the bright yolks of two eggs in flour.
Girl, you didn't even know you were part of the parnissam.
How many earthquakes have shaken Diebekorn’s line drawing hung on the wall?
Joshua excommunicated Jericho and we abandon our residences.
The source of cruelty resides in the limits of your imagination.
A voice like the bright yolks of two eggs in flour.
Boot prints in mud on the angled bank of the Rhine.
There is no evidence Spinoza ever swam across naked.
But we see him so clearly in the moonlight, arms swatting hands
Legs swatting feet, river flapping his body, eel unraveling river,
His voice like the bright yolks of two eggs in flour.
Recently reclaimed marshland marshal its shores.
The towpath along its edge has seen how many horses?
Through silted-up willow stands, his glazed body hucked up on the levee
He sings of Katwijk, where the river meets the sea.
His voice like the bright yolks of two eggs in flour.