Subversive 

Up and dispatched things into the country and to my father’s, and two keggs of Sturgeon and a dozen bottles of wine to Cambridge for my cozen Roger Pepys, which I give him. By and by down by water on several Deall ships, and stood upon a stage in one place seeing calkers sheathing of a ship. Then at Wapping to my carver’s about my Viall head. So home, and thence to my Viall maker’s in Bishopsgate Street; his name is Wise, who is a pretty fellow at it. Thence to the Exchange, and so home to dinner, and then to my office, where a full board, and busy all the afternoon, and among other things made a great contract with Sir W. Warren for 40,000 deals Swinsound, at 3l. 17s. 0d. per hundred. In the morning before I went on the water I was at Thames Street about some pitch, and there meeting Anthony Joyce, I took him and Mr. Stacy, the Tarr merchant, to the tavern, where Stacy told me many old stories of my Lady Batten’s former poor condition, and how her former husband broke, and how she came to her state.
At night, after office done, I went to Sir W. Batten’s, where my Lady and I [had] some high words about emptying our house of office, where I did tell her my mind, and at last agreed that it should be done through my office, and so all well. So home to bed.

I stood on my head
to make a low sound

at the tavern where old
stories broke me

I went at my words
emptying my mind


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 16 July 1663.

Allegories of Exile  


~ after "Paradise Lost," Raqib Shaw


There are things that bring me back 
to myself as soon as I'm in their presence,

though I might not have known that to be true
the minute before— A window layered all in blue

on the lower floor of a gallery, the opening 
lines of a cello that pry something open in me. 

One morning I stood enraptured before a hundred-
foot mural, and a stone seemed to roll away from 

a sealed tomb. The artist had applied brilliant 
automobile enamel paint with fine needle tips 

of syringes and porcupine quills. The many 
avatars of himself crossed landscapes lit

on fire, studded with rhinestones, crowded 
with creatures howling at the moon. Blue 

baboons tore the hearts out of their shredded 
prey like priests presiding over a sacrament. 

Centaurs flung baskets of gold coins into the air.
Hordes of elk and hummingbirds stampeded 

off the cliffs in a shower of springtime blossoms. 
Yes, I see what our world has become, and what we

have become in it. Yes, I know what it means to sob 
when I can't find words for the untranslatable. When

did we stop carrying lanterns for each other?
There goes a picnic basket holding fig jam, rare

cheeses, olives glistening in pools of oil: 
abundance drowning in violent ocean swells. 

And yet there's time to write this story on paper, 
with ink, under a saffron tree. Time to listen to what 

leaves and what arrives. To love, even now, what breaks 
and is beautiful, what's beautiful because it breaks.

Killers 

Up and all the morning at the office, among other things with Cooper the Purveyor, whose dullness in his proceeding in his work I was vexed at, and find that though he understands it may be as much as other men that profess skill in timber, yet I perceive that many things, they do by rote, and very dully.
Thence home to dinner, whither Captain Grove came and dined with me, he going into the country to-day; among other discourse he told me of discourse very much to my honour, both as to my care and ability, happening at the Duke of Albemarle’s table the other day, both from the Duke, and the Duchess themselves; and how I paid so much a year to him whose place it was of right, and that Mr. Coventry did report thus of me; which was greatly to my content, knowing how against their minds I was brought into the Navy.
Thence by water to Westminster, and there spent a good deal of time walking in the Hall, which is going to be repaired, and, God forgive me, had a mind to have got Mrs. Lane abroad, or fallen in with any woman else (in that hot humour). But it so happened she could not go out, nor I meet with any body else, and so I walked homeward, and in my way did many and great businesses of my own at the Temple among my lawyers and others to my great content, thanking God that I did not fall into any company to occasion spending time and money. To supper, and then to a little viall and to bed, sporting in my fancy with the Queen.

men that kill perceive
many things dully

go into the country
to right their minds

into the Navy
to be repaired

for a hot war
fall into bed


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 15 July 1663.

Kararua* 


(first soul)

You spoke these words
into my ear: I cannot talk
anymore. Teaching me,
even as you were dying,
about dried flowers.

* Ilocanos have a four-soul system: kararua (like the soul that only leaves the body after death); karkarma (the soul that can temporarily leave the physical body if it is stolen or if the person is frightened — this soul can be called back to the body); aniwaas (the soul that can leave the body when one is asleep, and visit places familiar to it); and araria (the soul that is liberated after death, though its presence can continue to manifest—to haunt living relatives and loved ones).

Just a suggestion 

Up a little late, last night recovering my sleepiness for the night before, which was lost, and so to my office to put papers and things to right, and making up my journal from Wednesday last to this day.
All the morning at my office doing of business; at noon Mr. Hunt came to me, and he and I to the Exchange, and a Coffee House, and drank there, and thence to my house to dinner, whither my uncle Thomas came, and he tells me that he is going down to Wisbech, there to try what he can recover of my uncle Day’s estate, and seems to have good arguments for what he do go about, in which I wish him good speed. I made him almost foxed, the poor man having but a bad head, and not used I believe nowadays to drink much wine. So after dinner, they being gone, I to my office, and so home to bed.
This day I hear the judges, according to order yesterday, did bring into the Lords’ House their reasons of their judgment in the business between my Lord Bristoll and the Chancellor; and the Lords do concur with the Judges that the articles are not treason, nor regularly brought into the House, and so voted that a Committee should be chosen to examine them; but nothing to be done therein till the next sitting of this Parliament (which is like to be adjourned in a day or two), and in the mean time the two Lords to, remain without prejudice done to either of them.

last night lost
in the office coffee

going down to day
an almost fox

used to being an ear
is sitting in


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 14 July 1663.

Araria* 


(fourth soul; a nonet)


I bow to the blooming squash flower,
to whorls of seaweed on the shore.
The moon’s fingernail wakes me—

I am its wayward child,
a tiny insect
blinded by light,
climbing rungs
streaked with
ash.


* Ilocanos have a four-soul system: kararua (like the soul that only leaves the body after death); karkarma (the soul that can temporarily leave the physical body if it is stolen or if the person is frightened — this soul can be called back to the body); aniwaas (the soul that can leave the body when one is asleep, and visit places familiar to it); and araria (the soul that is liberated after death, though its presence can continue to manifest—to haunt living relatives and loved ones).