To witness, to see, is to be a martyr.
It is to be devoted to what takes you apart
From yourself and thereby dismembers the see-er, the seer.
The sere seer.
To see something, to appreciate it truly
(“Absolute attentiveness is prayer”)
(Attention is love)
Is to let part of oneself pass out through the eyes
And attach itself, embed itself in the thing seen.
You lose yourself, a little, each time you look.
The sensation of splitting, here, can be painful.
Yet, behind all this -- behind even me -- the “me” that sees --
Behind my own disillusion and worry of the past, the
Future, which pretty much makes up my daily
Nerve-felt being -- behind all that, I dimly
Sense an “it” -- the it is free and cheerful,
See how it slips thru being and being
Comes and enters what is sunny by it --
There is a ceaseless addition and loss at the margin, the verge,
Which is finally, at its furthest snow-filtered flickering edges,
Wonderful and peaceful.
To see is to be a martyr.
But to see and write what you see
Is to let yourself go, and let it
Enter and open and see through your eyes
Its own.
Poetry is devotion.
To see oneself as a drift, a trace, is never pretty.
The self that witnesses this is drifted, torn apart.
However, the scene of the drifting, the tracing,
Is itself beautiful, hopeful. This
Is the constant paradox.
Buddhism speaks of the necessity of stilling the mind,
Meditating, allowing silence, as a way of gaining and
Entering peace and calm.
It appears that desire causes pain and anxiety, because
Desire connotes separation from what one needs.
What, then, is language, but an expression of
Desire for the world.
The price the poet pays for any insight which
He or she has, is to drift in anxiety, depression.
The choice is between being and knowing. By choosing
To drift in words, to think, to know, the poet resigns
Herself to the fact that she becomes separated from
Pure being and she sees the fiction of all things,
Including herself.
The poet feels sadness, but may not believe in
Sadness. The process of poetry itself is
Hopefulness.
They drove up the toll road,
He threw a quarter into the metal
Pay-toll funnel. It had a white plastic
Base, with small drainage holes. For the rain.
So there were already two times where one was.
The rain pounded on the glowing yellow light
Of the rest stop center.
Now they were past the toll
Gate. He was in love with
Her. Bookstores
Glistened. Now they were in a
Driveway. His attempt at a
Life, a short story.
He drove that way every Monday-Friday,
Up the pay toll road past suburbs of Baltimore.
The postindustrial cleansed gray blued the dawn.
He drove up the toll
Road, every morning.
Was his job now one
Letter, two letters in
His name. what was
Her name. he is with her then --
The house gets to be more wan and
Interesting. Supremely beautiful.
Ghost facing dances. Crystals. Ribbons.
Yellow ribbon round a red oak tree.
Red oaks. Vesicles. Round bout
Midnite, round out man. Es . Cape ha . Tch
* ] * ‘ * , * ] * ] *
A mentholated production
Of a beenie babies special
Of a Phil Rickstein Production
“The Oddfathers”
starring
( in order of appearance )
attached to your eyes
In order of appearance
Nexzel
Tecktron
Versignio, LLC
Beckatrix Poinzer Impolit cvbc
No Hano Ltd. 50
Dancing dragoons five hunnert infantrymenTch
Big old-fashioned news.
These days never seemed to end.
Then one day we were over.
Others, however, now incite mischief,
As inflicted with you as ambergris by damage.
* ] , ] , ] , ] *
Of a bent heaven production
Of a balanced irony simple heart throb
Minuteman picnic
Of an upturned green grass
Summer mystery miracle pickle green juice
Bubble grape jelly alien. S . in ..sp.ace hel.met.z
Here
Emoc*ereh*ew
CwOeMhEe
RSe COMwEh ea.tr
COM*E\I\n ..
sp.ace hel.met.z
Spill
Spill it into grape world
Rinse
Rise it into split whirl aov vegg
R]I]S]E],]R]I]S]E it into hardness --
Soften it down into malleable pulp.
Suckle it to children. Shove it to lovers. Show it
To the sun, sea eye, it land / it frake now/
Iot frake now]a]n]c]h]o]r]w]a]r][d]
See it as buildings . . . .
What we see is so /as is/quaint/so given/
Could be twin voxes birthing
Boxes burning. Try it as:
I could have been 1
But instead it was 3 --
Fire, rouge and azure --
Of these were --
It -- saucered round --
White cliffsides -- of renown --
It star -- scarred -- as in tree trunk --
w/ silenced as its sound:
This little from outside me
Drips, sips . . . We drove
Under the turnstile
What did we
We drove
Rode
Patient
Music
We drove
Swam
Waved
We made toward
We caused more
We ended less. We grew interest --
A quality that looked like marigolds
In a highway median, that changed
Three times a year -- purple
In May -- azure in September --
Brown in November -- barely grayed,
Just so barely slippaged outside myself,
How I drift for a moment in the calm level
Gaze of wuiet men with oval foreheads in
Their gray pilgrimages, in those old
Farmer pictures in their albums, they
Who stare at it, who glance at the
Rhubarb, who spear the olive with
The tin tine of a salad fork, where
Love enters its verticals, they widen
And settle, yet you are ended, yet Rome
Your work was largely senseless, old man.
You lost your teeth in your fifties.
One died. Another was born --
The birth seemed far off as winter:
Could this be the distant way outdoors
Was yesterday.
*
It filtered in the mirror.
It misted in, crystallized, tensiled
It glistens, scented scorpions
“why have you walked here,”
Vader strikes at Helgo with his saber.
“I have walked here . . . To be prince.”
Vader hurts Helgo. “I . am . Not .
Listening.”
Dream warriors
i am static / / neither for ward
nor back / a day full of circles
Not moving, our brains suddenly splinter --
The small immaculate bird hops,
*
I saw seagulls inland --
500 miles from the coast,
They circled the dumpsters
In back of the Taco Bell
Where the wide earth glistened
And the spaces
In my mind. In [my] mind
It packaged me
And placed unit 402
Far from you.
*
i wish for paisleys / & fractals
why can't i be broken down / like that
I wouldn’t even bother.
None of them could possibly
Understand or really enjoy
Listening to one of us
Talking live -- why not get more
Miniscule than that -- just fingertips
Tapping along the silent piano keys . . .
to night i read to 7 people / the bar
empty / crowd less distraction
The crown goes to the buzz ingest silence.
You would not go to a bar
To hear a poem. I would
Go to a bar to hear a
Poem, if I was in
Atlantis, or
Paraguay
In the time
Of the florescent
Indians
i am / ask ing question / every one
cold /
Who knows why? They are plainly
A bunch of fat brained trolls --
Alkies, one and all. Kids,
They only wash their faces
One time a year,
And they regularly masturbate
Or *gasp* regularly do not
Have any sex at all . . .
And not even talk about it . . .
Mama mia!
a day spent cook ing / i day / dream
thru the steam / about stand ing on
I was, too, I was standing,
It was standing, he, it,
Was was standing, was,
It was you, it, you,
Freshen,
Stage
A heart
Strange
A
Protest
From the gauls
Of thyme,
From right by the Hampton Inn
In Carson City, right there
On the taco -- there officer --
There/the taco explod.es
FINCH************************
INCH**************************
NCH**************************
CH**************************
H**************************
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i do not /
******************
feel good /**
**************** /
this flu / is bad
& so i reel ******************
in my mind / euphoric / ************
******
confused
& i am******************
full / of for******************
get full
scares me
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stage /
Stage
Tage
Age
Ge
E
Shadow Queen: Smoke already, see
It/get behind the margin///rime/////
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///////willingness//////// /////////////////////////// ///////////////////////////// /////////////////////////////// //////////////////////////// ////////////////////////////// /////////////////////////////// //////////////////////////////// ///////trust///////time/////// /////////////////slides////////// ///////////////////its/////////// /////////////////////slow////// /////////////////////////tides/// //////////////////////////////// /////////////////////////////// //////////////////////////////// ////////////////////////////// /////////////////////////////// //////////////////////////////// [ ] . [ ] . [] . [] . [] . [] . ///////door///////freeedom/////// ///////////////////////////////////// ////////////////////////////////// /////////////////////////////////// //////////////////////////// ////////////////////////////// /////////////////////////////// //////////////////////////////// [ ] . [ ] . [] . [] . [] . [] . ///////d.o..k.///////f..a.k./////// ///////////////////////////////////// ////////////////////////////////// /////////////////////////////////// //////////////////////////// ////////////////////////////// /////////////////////////////// //////////////////////////////// For Derrida, all life is stretched out in time and diced-out in space in such a way that phenomenological self-identity is an illusion. “So this means, when I walked to the park with her . . . ?” Must I live to watch your death “When I kissed her, and held her hand . . . ?” Or you watch mine It must be very high indeed “So this means, when I walked to the park with her . . . ?” Very high and very “When I kissed her, and held her hand . . . ?” Fuckingly a-ok But, a breeze blows in the screen window. Grace is not to know what is coming, But to say that is naïve. Paradox is Its lemon, mystery its radish. You could also have this phase of all these labels. They’d be big and they’d be fat. They wouldn’t like that for long however -- Soon enough we’d revert to our falling stasis, They’d fall away vanished matchbox cars Derrida calls life a “text” or “writing” because life is like writing: life on the phenomenological level appears holistic (much as a word-meaning appears self-identical, i.e., arising all at once), but life is actually a time/space “drift.” Zen for me centers always, like, fucked up understanding of reality, yet one that has always been undercut by an every void every voice every time time voice |
1 comment:
wow! this is amazing. how did you do it?
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