drive in the summer night the sensation of time flies away from fingertips music on the radio we connect to exterior scene the cornfields billow in bluish tips in segments elongated through the rows the regiments of stalks reach out to the horizon
the backseat was plastic or like plastic when we were kids there was hard round piping that differentiated the parts of the seats from each other and kept us apart too kept us from ripping each other’s hair out or from tearing off the shirt of another girl
I can’t travel anymore I am rooted into the ground I have lost my privileges to voyage beyond the confines of the present and what is happened to the day since it has lost its light as days blend into nights and become one thing that is only separating them is the clock and how it plays out hours
to remember in cars don’t fear the reaper or the twilight zone when you turn to stone and why oh why can’t we be friends in this chocolate city oh Bernadette its a hot time summer in the city with the incense & peppermints all of smells of my best friend’s girl but no one knows the cracklin rose or the king of the road and hey good lookin, Cindy tells me that under the milky way tonite
& im still waitin for my ruca i barely pulled up w/ my heina or whats tonite will be behind her and there are lights of stars ive been runnin down a dream you know a change will do you good will do you good before you know the gold dust woman and theres Christian zombie vampires I am the father the father of nothing oh what you do to me what you do to me the words escape melt on the dashboard a conglomeration between action and experience between inside our minds without speaking everyone knows the radio wants to play your song because of course humans want a continuous soundtrack a tremolo experience of within and without a reverberation of time connect between dark and light and sever the witness of time
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Because Warhol was Right
Had it in the right vein anyway, that household objects are beautiful, especially the broom which is bound upright and looks so much like a discreet woman gathering her skirts against the gloom, because dust is what we dismay, what we envy, what we entreat to the corners & brush out of the day, because the bottle of bleach is so curved & circumspect in its boundaries and is the arbiter of all that may be clean
Because nightfall is imminent, because dawn is a question mark, because dusk draws the lines around conversations and words and through utterances we hope to make sure our mark is drawn upon the world
Because I am I, or what I would’ve hoped to be, or I am not, or that I am a page, or a blankness, an utter refuge from thinking of what am I, or that I is a making, or that I is part of something more than what it seems today
Because balls of yarn are unfurled, because the circle is the universe, and that what unfolds is being in time, although being is never universal, or that being is not just little terrarium stars, blinked out across your horizon
Because the meaning is yet to be discovered, and is discovered through saying, although not normally discovered, except for years later, when we reflect, or remember by looking very closely at a leaf, and for the first time recognizing that the leaf mirrors the same body as our human one, and then by then too late
Because there are systems, because everything revolves around them and to them, and that systems are endemic of the natural world, and all that is natural; because systems are the brain’s way of working out the limitless numbers of stars in the sky, the way of saying that this face differs from this face differs from me
Because I am the foothold, because I am the threshold; because I don’t know the answers to the darkness, or what remains there; because I am amphibious, because the sunlight casts its wise light on all those who choose to take its light in
Because darkness is everywhere, because there are seeds of consolation; because the light of living doesn’t always heal, because pain is superfluous, because time is a long hallway of diminishing light; because light is relative and therefore means something different to every human on the planet; and inclusiveness is a flat line, and all the hearts drum along in succession; sequestered in their closeted space
Because forever is a pinprick, because the stage the waterfall; because I have seen inside of oceans green combed black, because waking doesn’t release the dream, because a serpent rides on backs of minutes, because the sidewalk turns to a circle, because grey is the inside of the eyes, and the school of fish turns one cloud of flashing light; and we get old, and face away, and grieve small handprints; and make fluttering sounds in our flight, and stoop over a valley of papery memories, try to catch them and hold them, hold the little fishes, so near.
Because nightfall is imminent, because dawn is a question mark, because dusk draws the lines around conversations and words and through utterances we hope to make sure our mark is drawn upon the world
Because I am I, or what I would’ve hoped to be, or I am not, or that I am a page, or a blankness, an utter refuge from thinking of what am I, or that I is a making, or that I is part of something more than what it seems today
Because balls of yarn are unfurled, because the circle is the universe, and that what unfolds is being in time, although being is never universal, or that being is not just little terrarium stars, blinked out across your horizon
Because the meaning is yet to be discovered, and is discovered through saying, although not normally discovered, except for years later, when we reflect, or remember by looking very closely at a leaf, and for the first time recognizing that the leaf mirrors the same body as our human one, and then by then too late
Because there are systems, because everything revolves around them and to them, and that systems are endemic of the natural world, and all that is natural; because systems are the brain’s way of working out the limitless numbers of stars in the sky, the way of saying that this face differs from this face differs from me
Because I am the foothold, because I am the threshold; because I don’t know the answers to the darkness, or what remains there; because I am amphibious, because the sunlight casts its wise light on all those who choose to take its light in
Because darkness is everywhere, because there are seeds of consolation; because the light of living doesn’t always heal, because pain is superfluous, because time is a long hallway of diminishing light; because light is relative and therefore means something different to every human on the planet; and inclusiveness is a flat line, and all the hearts drum along in succession; sequestered in their closeted space
Because forever is a pinprick, because the stage the waterfall; because I have seen inside of oceans green combed black, because waking doesn’t release the dream, because a serpent rides on backs of minutes, because the sidewalk turns to a circle, because grey is the inside of the eyes, and the school of fish turns one cloud of flashing light; and we get old, and face away, and grieve small handprints; and make fluttering sounds in our flight, and stoop over a valley of papery memories, try to catch them and hold them, hold the little fishes, so near.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Sappho's Future
Sappho’s Future
Please, release me, realize me, throw out the key, throw out the idea of a key, institute perhaps not, institute what have you, get out of town, go quickly, don't go, I love you, today I kept your grade school picture in my hand, is it still true, I have contacted the pasty members, I have collected dustdrops, I am asking you simply, what is the reason for the sunrise, I am conflicted, I am less of a solid persona, there is blood in every drop of water from the tap, I don't know anymore.
Where is the molecule, what about the atom, I know about fusion, I am concerned for chaos, and chaos the understanding, chaos the reason for any sense that may occur in the universe, I parse out the lyrics of Sappho, the lyrics are fragments, there is no reason left to the words she made, the thousands of years ago, when she was in love, when she existed and loved, when she was real, cried down crystalline amoebas from her eyedrops, glued her heart to another, felt the wind lift up her hair upon leaving the building, felt it engulf & carry her, must have been mighty, must have been clean, we can't imagine, the smell of that wind.
I am so purely, pure of a nightmare, pure in the sense that I let down your drawbridge; down into Paris, or darkest New York, the concept of crowded is burned in our pysche, the concept of city is forever hardcored, it's become hardwired in our minds, what about us with the city, where we mark and converge, where we disrupt and hooligan ourselves and run up against poor, where all of a sudden we are poor, and look up from the last drink, and see our eyes reflect in the sky; and wonder where she is, and wonder before, the last time that's haunting, the last time is peaceful, the last time is sure to drown out the sun, forever unbending but forever relenting, I am still here waiting, waiting for more.
Please, release me, realize me, throw out the key, throw out the idea of a key, institute perhaps not, institute what have you, get out of town, go quickly, don't go, I love you, today I kept your grade school picture in my hand, is it still true, I have contacted the pasty members, I have collected dustdrops, I am asking you simply, what is the reason for the sunrise, I am conflicted, I am less of a solid persona, there is blood in every drop of water from the tap, I don't know anymore.
Where is the molecule, what about the atom, I know about fusion, I am concerned for chaos, and chaos the understanding, chaos the reason for any sense that may occur in the universe, I parse out the lyrics of Sappho, the lyrics are fragments, there is no reason left to the words she made, the thousands of years ago, when she was in love, when she existed and loved, when she was real, cried down crystalline amoebas from her eyedrops, glued her heart to another, felt the wind lift up her hair upon leaving the building, felt it engulf & carry her, must have been mighty, must have been clean, we can't imagine, the smell of that wind.
I am so purely, pure of a nightmare, pure in the sense that I let down your drawbridge; down into Paris, or darkest New York, the concept of crowded is burned in our pysche, the concept of city is forever hardcored, it's become hardwired in our minds, what about us with the city, where we mark and converge, where we disrupt and hooligan ourselves and run up against poor, where all of a sudden we are poor, and look up from the last drink, and see our eyes reflect in the sky; and wonder where she is, and wonder before, the last time that's haunting, the last time is peaceful, the last time is sure to drown out the sun, forever unbending but forever relenting, I am still here waiting, waiting for more.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Ode to the Afterlife
-- after Federico Garcia Lorca
The spoons crouched on kitchen tables,
lying in wait to plug the noses
of parents orphaned, sequestered
in corners of dark sediment honeycomb.
Guards asleep at the gates.
Bricks and curbs shaking in sunlight.
Cars with no drivers, marooned in the street.
Wailing in the distance.
Blood dried to the sidewalk. The smell of it
in the hot sun.
To facilitate communication came thousands
of translators. Walkie talkies barked in their hands.
Their teeth glimmered sharply in the sunlight.
“Lie down. Lie down,” they said.
And we did.
Fingers of Light
The morning too has its end in itself where the clearing rises and shakes out the dew shakes off the night the stars fall down dusty and distant although they retain their light they aren’t heteronymous to each other anymore the beams of stars still bright when they are put into bags
Objects and people fill the rooms the rooms of our night as we sweep up our days and the separation of the rooms the walls become membranes thick viscous and sturdy walls with the plant cellulose that under the microscope are hard and discrete
Separation is necessary but connection survives if the kinship of languages is to be demonstrated by translations how else can this be done but by conveying the form and meaning of the original as accurately as possible[1] is the same the same in all ways to express a feeling or visions the sensory experiences of time
Kinship not involving likeness that the bowl and the pot are of the same ilk because they hold things because they are round but they serve different reasons for being for use as is mer to sea to poisson to crustaceans to cheval to equestrian to coeur to the body
Les langues imparfaites en cela que plusieurs, manqué la suprême that the imperfection of language is due to their plural nature and the supreme lack that happens when we think without writing no hieroglyphics to guide any future generation
The memories of other writers their languages their dialects their hometown what they had for dinner the night they died or that morning as their various lives came to their inevitable halt that collective intelligence anger hurt remorse drunkenness disease seeps through their words and weighs the pages and weighs heavy on the hand of the translator when she takes up her pen to transmit another’s words through the years and through the sieve of her mind
Ride the language seek out the corners of meaning intimation nuance syntactic ordering that orders itself according to the logics of the time so that no one syntax or grammar is ever concrete but for the participants and how they wish to call down the words into their various powers to call them down like leaves felled from the trees command them into presence into being Fingers of light begin to push up on the night Infuse the air with the air of the past the whole of existence becomes a Babelian circle like Borges’ book where the past is the future and the future the past
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Chant for the End of the World
Chant for the End of the World
If there is god, if and a mother; if there is future in place of the past; if there is science; if there are roads left; if there is silence, magic and glass; if there is sunrise, if it continues, if it is curling, light on the mast.
If there are circles, if they move inward; if there is any air left to breathe; if there is dust on the soles of the young ones; if there are purple spots on their knees; if we remember, if we’re forgotten; if nothing remains for us but the seas; if we lose aspect, if we regain it; if we can’t rise up from disease.
If we are lonely; if we exploded; if vermillion hangs from the trees; if there are slushes; if there are gunners; if there is nothing much left to see; if we are clouded, if we are shrouded; if we can’t seem to outlive the past; if we are merchants or huddled destroyers; if we come together at last.
If we can say them, words in the future; if we sustain their potential blast; if we perceive that they’re building their own worlds; if we plunge into ebullient gas; if there we find refuge, inside the verb world; if we conceive of non linear time; if we roll over; if we roll under; if we can ever hide in that line.
For if we still utter, utter words without knowing, meaning pervades the subsequent space; never a real world; never a false one; a world built on perception of senses and place; if we recant them, if we withdraw them, still our utterances remain in the fight; words are the portals, when we are muted, to transfer interior ghosts into light.
If there is god, if and a mother; if there is future in place of the past; if there is science; if there are roads left; if there is silence, magic and glass; if there is sunrise, if it continues, if it is curling, light on the mast.
If there are circles, if they move inward; if there is any air left to breathe; if there is dust on the soles of the young ones; if there are purple spots on their knees; if we remember, if we’re forgotten; if nothing remains for us but the seas; if we lose aspect, if we regain it; if we can’t rise up from disease.
If we are lonely; if we exploded; if vermillion hangs from the trees; if there are slushes; if there are gunners; if there is nothing much left to see; if we are clouded, if we are shrouded; if we can’t seem to outlive the past; if we are merchants or huddled destroyers; if we come together at last.
If we can say them, words in the future; if we sustain their potential blast; if we perceive that they’re building their own worlds; if we plunge into ebullient gas; if there we find refuge, inside the verb world; if we conceive of non linear time; if we roll over; if we roll under; if we can ever hide in that line.
For if we still utter, utter words without knowing, meaning pervades the subsequent space; never a real world; never a false one; a world built on perception of senses and place; if we recant them, if we withdraw them, still our utterances remain in the fight; words are the portals, when we are muted, to transfer interior ghosts into light.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)