Thursday, April 30, 2009
No Alibi
for Harriet, belatedly, on her birthday
Beauty is too quick for time, but that
Time carries with it - and upon our backs -
Our own decay and our realization
Of it, revelation, or bleak in body
And of poverty in spirit divine, the game
Is determination, not over-determination:
Are those things grains of rice, or just
A pile of nice icey lice? I mean by this
Only that a life can have many difficulties
Not one’s own, but that they can be
Recognized. Elm tree, oak tree, maple
Are all now of a certain green fire.
Growth is irrational as a being, because
It is always doing what is never ending.
[ 04.29.09 ]
*
Beauty is too quick for time, but that
Time carries with it - and upon our backs -
Our own decay and our realization
Of it, revelation, or bleak in body
And of poverty in spirit divine, the game
Is determination, not over-determination:
Are those things grains of rice, or just
A pile of nice icey lice? I mean by this
Only that a life can have many difficulties
Not one’s own, but that they can be
Recognized. Elm tree, oak tree, maple
Are all now of a certain green fire.
Growth is irrational as a being, because
It is always doing what is never ending.
[ 04.29.09 ]
*
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Breakfasts at The Institute
The blank smears of
Weather against glass
Are the full marks of
Assimilated art against
My eye, with some
Interpretation of color,
Form, declension (the eye
Moves, for heaven's sake!),
Even a squence of
Mutable names for those
Who need to legitimize
The history of it all.
The Diamond Sutra,
Or a single jar of Tibetan
Snow, the snow leopard,
Sexuality and sex:
From the spillage of
Whose blood do these forms
Arrive to our senses,
Imparted by the ordinal
"Non-person" of divinity
Who thus acts according to their
Heritable alienation?
Make it go, we say, who are
Victimized by the wide
Variety of perception available
Where everyone can see yourself
Blind, but you cannot see them,
And where everyone can see you,
But you are blind to yourself.
*
Weather against glass
Are the full marks of
Assimilated art against
My eye, with some
Interpretation of color,
Form, declension (the eye
Moves, for heaven's sake!),
Even a squence of
Mutable names for those
Who need to legitimize
The history of it all.
The Diamond Sutra,
Or a single jar of Tibetan
Snow, the snow leopard,
Sexuality and sex:
From the spillage of
Whose blood do these forms
Arrive to our senses,
Imparted by the ordinal
"Non-person" of divinity
Who thus acts according to their
Heritable alienation?
Make it go, we say, who are
Victimized by the wide
Variety of perception available
Where everyone can see yourself
Blind, but you cannot see them,
And where everyone can see you,
But you are blind to yourself.
*
Saturday, April 25, 2009
After Midnight
For that you be lost, I be, we
Two, in the interconnected
Pathways hidden from the sun
At Acco, the labyrinthine
Twists leading nowhere
Behind the Grand Bazaar
In Damascus, how anyway one does
Individuate a Self as the unmoving
Water in a river that keeps
Moving anyway. Past as
Parsed as passed again, or
You make your own stream
From your dying, that the faithfulness
Of Death comes to you as
Personal, and thus, is
Distinguished from as well as
In esteem of the common flow of
Persistently deceasing persons.
But that homelessness is a form
Of permeability as well as
Portability, no more than you can haul,
In Dorn's term, The Living Batch,
Then simply to get out of
Inclement weathers, or that I bring my
Inclemencies everywhere, in out of
The rain, condensation still
Reigns in my heart. But now it is
Night, and my dreams are
Added to the dreams of all these
Other children embodied now
As aging males the petals of whose
Orchids are beginning to go, as
The slightly bruised nectarines
Between their legs, as we all are
Buoyed against a subsistence economy of
Sex, fellatio and purloined
Cigarettes, that I feel the constant need
To separate mine from theirs,
The sanction from Jesus, with
Permission from the elided sense of
Mother. There is a sigh. Someone
Mumbles that it's two AM, and I know
My intent has never been to
Extinguish common fires, but to
Distinguish myself as simply "a room
Of my own" that I am totally willing
To share, in the ambiguous whispered
Dreams next to the windows'
Streetlit interrupting glare. I cannot
Sleep. To be gone mentally, is to
Neglect the (feeling) body. I've been
Fertilized by faithlessness.
Is there somewhere near, a Mother figure
Willing to screw herself gently with
A half-full glass of water, in plain
View in order to satisfy some aging boy's
Sense of desire, clarity and terror
As well as provide a semi-permanent
Slake for thirst? None of us
Really imagined this could ever be so.
I masturbate under cover in a roomful
Of blank and starving men.
*
Two, in the interconnected
Pathways hidden from the sun
At Acco, the labyrinthine
Twists leading nowhere
Behind the Grand Bazaar
In Damascus, how anyway one does
Individuate a Self as the unmoving
Water in a river that keeps
Moving anyway. Past as
Parsed as passed again, or
You make your own stream
From your dying, that the faithfulness
Of Death comes to you as
Personal, and thus, is
Distinguished from as well as
In esteem of the common flow of
Persistently deceasing persons.
But that homelessness is a form
Of permeability as well as
Portability, no more than you can haul,
In Dorn's term, The Living Batch,
Then simply to get out of
Inclement weathers, or that I bring my
Inclemencies everywhere, in out of
The rain, condensation still
Reigns in my heart. But now it is
Night, and my dreams are
Added to the dreams of all these
Other children embodied now
As aging males the petals of whose
Orchids are beginning to go, as
The slightly bruised nectarines
Between their legs, as we all are
Buoyed against a subsistence economy of
Sex, fellatio and purloined
Cigarettes, that I feel the constant need
To separate mine from theirs,
The sanction from Jesus, with
Permission from the elided sense of
Mother. There is a sigh. Someone
Mumbles that it's two AM, and I know
My intent has never been to
Extinguish common fires, but to
Distinguish myself as simply "a room
Of my own" that I am totally willing
To share, in the ambiguous whispered
Dreams next to the windows'
Streetlit interrupting glare. I cannot
Sleep. To be gone mentally, is to
Neglect the (feeling) body. I've been
Fertilized by faithlessness.
Is there somewhere near, a Mother figure
Willing to screw herself gently with
A half-full glass of water, in plain
View in order to satisfy some aging boy's
Sense of desire, clarity and terror
As well as provide a semi-permanent
Slake for thirst? None of us
Really imagined this could ever be so.
I masturbate under cover in a roomful
Of blank and starving men.
*
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Amor Propre
after Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette
An immense and longing
Agitation, just like
The sea [La Rochefoucauld].
When used for self-
Manifestation, the lacunae
Thus created become
Doorways that let the fallen
Angels in, the whole
Shot, an ideal for which
An excuse can always be
Found, after the fact.
The sky, in fact, is colorless.
And eye-to-eye, conscious life
Always wants cuts upon itself.
*
An immense and longing
Agitation, just like
The sea [La Rochefoucauld].
When used for self-
Manifestation, the lacunae
Thus created become
Doorways that let the fallen
Angels in, the whole
Shot, an ideal for which
An excuse can always be
Found, after the fact.
The sky, in fact, is colorless.
And eye-to-eye, conscious life
Always wants cuts upon itself.
*
Jim
Gravity doesn't feint:
Lead is most usually dead.
Saturn pulls no punches:
Jupiter is the one who lies.
It used to be
Iron men and wooden ships,
Now everything is Jello,
Completely buoyant
And in which
Nothing is able to float.
*
Lead is most usually dead.
Saturn pulls no punches:
Jupiter is the one who lies.
It used to be
Iron men and wooden ships,
Now everything is Jello,
Completely buoyant
And in which
Nothing is able to float.
*
Monday, April 20, 2009
She Gived Him a Piece of Her Mind
[ All of The People ]
Our proprietary groceries
Our chattering minds
The Grand Interiors
Of our enormous cars
Ruled by the fiction of
All our beliefs, the factual
Possessions that tie us down
We fly away by shattering ourselves
Into pubic hair and speaking
In tongues, and recover
To find we are both ruler and ruled
In a world linguistically doomed
*
[ Spice Route ]
"The spider thinks with its legs."
Mind is the Lesser Vehicle.
Catch, or door latch.
"Whatcha buildin'?
A three-legged stool?
A 24-carat diamond?
The Trojan Horse?"
There is language without intention
That requires, not religion,
But Faith.
So: What's the deal
With the Mulberry leaf?
Are we there, yet?
*
Our proprietary groceries
Our chattering minds
The Grand Interiors
Of our enormous cars
Ruled by the fiction of
All our beliefs, the factual
Possessions that tie us down
We fly away by shattering ourselves
Into pubic hair and speaking
In tongues, and recover
To find we are both ruler and ruled
In a world linguistically doomed
*
[ Spice Route ]
"The spider thinks with its legs."
Mind is the Lesser Vehicle.
Catch, or door latch.
"Whatcha buildin'?
A three-legged stool?
A 24-carat diamond?
The Trojan Horse?"
There is language without intention
That requires, not religion,
But Faith.
So: What's the deal
With the Mulberry leaf?
Are we there, yet?
*
Switch
Memory loss as lifetime
Or merely seasonal, related
Either and/or both to
Going heroin to speed,
Winter through spring
To summer, or is it
A semi-permanent result
Of electroshock therapy,
The "lightning" of Zeus become
The sickle Typhon used
To dismember Zeus'
Proprioceptive sinews
And hang them in a bearskin sack
In the subtle light
And shadows of the watery
Corycian Cave?
Whatever my red dress
And high-heeled sneakers
Can't tell or supplant, I can
For certain ell you this:
Heroin/speed probably
Will take the bulk of the blame,
Illegal and reviled as anyway
The habituation of the Great
Unwashed, whereas
Electroshock, perhaps thought
Less than good, is oresumed
An efficacious process whose side effects
We must endure, in order
To give ourselves the chance of
Getting better. Of course
No one is betting better.
Fortunately,
We've all forgotten this.
*
Or merely seasonal, related
Either and/or both to
Going heroin to speed,
Winter through spring
To summer, or is it
A semi-permanent result
Of electroshock therapy,
The "lightning" of Zeus become
The sickle Typhon used
To dismember Zeus'
Proprioceptive sinews
And hang them in a bearskin sack
In the subtle light
And shadows of the watery
Corycian Cave?
Whatever my red dress
And high-heeled sneakers
Can't tell or supplant, I can
For certain ell you this:
Heroin/speed probably
Will take the bulk of the blame,
Illegal and reviled as anyway
The habituation of the Great
Unwashed, whereas
Electroshock, perhaps thought
Less than good, is oresumed
An efficacious process whose side effects
We must endure, in order
To give ourselves the chance of
Getting better. Of course
No one is betting better.
Fortunately,
We've all forgotten this.
*
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Ne Lector Ultra Littoras
The cosmic matter of
3:10 AM Tuesday "thought"
Is mortised as the confetti of
A bored and chewing mouse
In a two-star hotel, out near
The outbank of nothingness.
"You might be surprised
At the fun you'll have."
36 hours with no food.
Does the bus come out this far?
*
3:10 AM Tuesday "thought"
Is mortised as the confetti of
A bored and chewing mouse
In a two-star hotel, out near
The outbank of nothingness.
"You might be surprised
At the fun you'll have."
36 hours with no food.
Does the bus come out this far?
*
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Dissemination
Testiment to history: On the middle segment of an ant barks a dog that carries on its spine a horse on whose back rides a miserable, starving goat.
The creator is
The cloud, an exhalation
Invisible, esoteric
As equally
The Manifested Creature
Through
The recital of divine names,
Written formulas of meditation,
And realization of
Divine qualities within
The human form
(The comprehension of disease,
"Conquering the conquering spirit."
Cabeza de Vaca (b. 1490
Returned to Cadiz in 1543
In chains, as Colombo had
In 1500. The mind
Bristling with acquisition
And "the City (Constantinople)
Surviving
Although each new attack lengthened
The odds of survival.
Both towers and mines
Had failed Mehmet thus the final
Direct assault, the fall of
The City into the hands of
Infidels calling other infidels
"Infidels," softened up
As Byzantine pointillism had been
By the Crusader hordes
Through Venice in 1204.
The fall was matched
By western defiance of
Standard Islamic law: The rise of
Giovann Bellini's ability "to conjure
Living, three-dimensional
Figures from flat paper,"
Superceding its mostly
Fascinated yet suspicious subjects.
As out of belief (libido), Hallaj
Was executed in Baghdad in 922
For the heresy of simply stating
"I am the Truth." Tarantino
In Istanbul is okay: Hell's Angels
In leather as armor and sign,
And their girls in leather as
Deconstructive desire,
Resolution and sex
In a virtiolic, nubile yet entirely
Venal Get the Money world:
"Eating the dogs seemed to give
Strength enough to go forward" [Cabeza],
But Macadams in Istanbul
Is better: A Pelesgian at home
In Crete or Arkadia, even
Beneath the Golden Dome at
Jesusalem, terrestrial, coiled
And clear as Ibn al-Arabi in Damascus
Locked
Through the minerals of inorganic
Nature (viral and divine)
To (human) spirits
Ecstatic with love.
War it was said by Herakleitos,
Is the father of all things.
My own father is recently deceased.
*
The creator is
The cloud, an exhalation
Invisible, esoteric
As equally
The Manifested Creature
Through
The recital of divine names,
Written formulas of meditation,
And realization of
Divine qualities within
The human form
(The comprehension of disease,
"Conquering the conquering spirit."
Cabeza de Vaca (b. 1490
Returned to Cadiz in 1543
In chains, as Colombo had
In 1500. The mind
Bristling with acquisition
And "the City (Constantinople)
Surviving
Although each new attack lengthened
The odds of survival.
Both towers and mines
Had failed Mehmet thus the final
Direct assault, the fall of
The City into the hands of
Infidels calling other infidels
"Infidels," softened up
As Byzantine pointillism had been
By the Crusader hordes
Through Venice in 1204.
The fall was matched
By western defiance of
Standard Islamic law: The rise of
Giovann Bellini's ability "to conjure
Living, three-dimensional
Figures from flat paper,"
Superceding its mostly
Fascinated yet suspicious subjects.
As out of belief (libido), Hallaj
Was executed in Baghdad in 922
For the heresy of simply stating
"I am the Truth." Tarantino
In Istanbul is okay: Hell's Angels
In leather as armor and sign,
And their girls in leather as
Deconstructive desire,
Resolution and sex
In a virtiolic, nubile yet entirely
Venal Get the Money world:
"Eating the dogs seemed to give
Strength enough to go forward" [Cabeza],
But Macadams in Istanbul
Is better: A Pelesgian at home
In Crete or Arkadia, even
Beneath the Golden Dome at
Jesusalem, terrestrial, coiled
And clear as Ibn al-Arabi in Damascus
Locked
Through the minerals of inorganic
Nature (viral and divine)
To (human) spirits
Ecstatic with love.
War it was said by Herakleitos,
Is the father of all things.
My own father is recently deceased.
*
Thursday, April 9, 2009
The Scarf of the Crimson Rose: A Walking Tour
in, on and about the premises of Istanbul, 08 March 2009
[ Re: Mark ]
The Galata Tower is still
the Galata Tower
The Galata Bridge is
Still the Galata Bridge
For the years
the spine aches
Reverberant
The names
remain the same
*
[ Andiamo ]
In along behind a walled courtyard
park and garden
just below Hagia Sophia
lush green grass, yellow tulips
and row upon row of what I take to be pansies
''pluck, statue, palm''
and tree upon tree upon tree
under thoughtless canopy of endless blue skies
the sentience, the sentiment
that you live where you are
that you determine its limits
*
[ High and Deep ]
The wide, inverted
scooped-out interior dome of
Hagia Sophia
the well of souls
and half-a-kilometer away
its practicum
where the Bosphorus joins
The Golden Horn
right there at the crotch of it
the harbor is being dredged
*
[ Of Flowers ]
There is no way
to gain access
to the communion
but through
a recession (of time
a recanting
of belief
(it is to the south we must go)
as sweet as with bees
to rank pollen
pre-gold to the unmade
bed
*
[ Spur ]
The guard with the machine gun
all the time war
we go over the wall
*
[ The Lights are Going Out All Over Town ]
To penetrate the circumvalem
impossible
it is (in) the limbic
system or citadel
its horizon
impassable
which the sun breaks
when it goes down:
the plausible deconstruction
the instant virgin
the implausibly shining night
*
[ Fool's Gold ]
I was spored from space
without the benefit of time
(although time has taken
its time, and toll:
a tourist in her own country:
pine planks stacked
against a grey tile wall
*
[ Echo ]
Style is everything
There is no nativity
but the memory of
the honor of
the present
regard of it
*
[ B Movie ]
The edifice
will always be there:
I came to look at
the tourists.
The fleas are active.
The dog is asleep.
*
[ Nimbus ]
The park that was
Two hours ago
Completely deserted
Now screams with ancient children
*
[ Mantlepiece ]
The bridge, the ferries,
The fish sandwich and necessary
Cargo transit. Blue water,
Blue sky and birds
With rows of buildings
Circumventing everything:
A marble pillar with
Nothing on top. Just
Give me the endless flow.
You can keep the water.
*
[ The Bridge ]
Ikaros fell
But Phaedros leaped:
Medusan rage
Plumbs the silence
But not the depths.
We must be buoyed
By something
Unknown.
*
[ The Word ]
Red is the color
The darkness within
Imagines itself to be
When feeling is
Inverted to
Thought, and thought
Goes blank in favor of
Perception. The rose
Finds its capacity
By opening its limitations
*
[ Afterword ]
The merry-go-round
the jewel-encrypted rocking horse
Muybridge
Cheval Pave Ou
the carboniferous testimony of
geopolitical and geothermal movement
and Troy
the Greek syntax of
its brokenness:
first the Phoenix
then the ash
and only thereafter
the final Parthenon
::
(17 Novemer 1973 - 5 February 1984
''under the sign of the donkey''
George Papadopoulos
paralogia, alogos
interlocked
and each without end)
*
[ Unsolved: before the Afterword ]
for Edward Dorn
Igitur descends the crypt
star by star
to forgive
the vacant with more vacancy
Zone of total
rupture
where God wears
for a masque
the hand-over-hand
predictum
of the absolution
of chance
*
[ Interlude ]
Cranes continue to nest
In the bare treetops
*
[ Aftermath ]
1
The skeptic
is a kleptomaniac
in reverse:
she vomits up
randonee
for the purpose of
examining
the detour
in the contour
of its forms
2
Absence as necessity
''the voice of a whirlwind''
in a world that
has a place
but as yet
has taken no shape
The Spirit of the Age
with neither
Deism or Theism
applied
wherever and whenever
the horse begins to rise
3
But
a rose
become
a horse?
It's all about
the source
of sweat
4
Enlightenment
is simple
unburdening
5
Save the honor
of the name
*
[ An explication of "rose" and "horse" and related other things: A letter to Jenny Dorn:
Jennifer,
Thanks for your kind remarks about my Istanbul walking tour poem.
I too was wondering about the relationship between Rose and Horse. Since the poem begins and ends with a concern for Naming, I think now to mention that in arabic, "wird" is the word for Rose, and an almost exact homologue, "ward" is the name of a particular Sufi spiritual practice. Sufi masters have been thought over the years to be able to "mentally" put ripples across the surface of a bowl of water, such that they eventually resemble the unfolding of a rose.
When I think of "unfolding" I think of Blaser's sense from I don't remember who of the Greek word "depli" for which there is no exact translation, but the sense of "unfolding the fold" was thought appropriate if slightly inexact. And in this, I am also reminded of the story of Mozart at a dinner party, almost mindlessly and habitually folding, unfolding and refolding his napkin in endless variations.
The Rose of course has the inherited tradition of romance from the Near- and Middle East as far as Pakistan, and from the Troubadours, for whom "unfolding" was as TROBAR - finding the placement of fingers on the neck of the lute to sound the appropriate note - to hear their own exacting residue in language: This would be NOMOS, not exactly "law" but something more resembling "tradition" or the "profoundy common" which in the case of the Rose would equally be a profound commitment to beauty.
The making.
Unfolding the folds . . . and refolding them. Or how that transfer of value as creation is always the local effort of embodied sense, given over to Otherness, the completed Work.
Anyway, what about the horse? Irby has it that horse=ship=church to which we might add = tree. Jack Clarke defined poiesis as "the first sound realized in a church forever." Like the Sufic "ripples" this turbulence has a spiritual and cultural significance as an effort toward keeping love active in both heart and mind . . . and gut - the rock on which Jesus told Peter to build his church.
Ships are buoyed by the turbulence they create. And it is interesting to note that the ancient Hittites in battle released mares in heat toward the stallions of their opponents in order to create turbulence and real chaos. The "disorder" of all this folding and unfolding - this "first sound realized" - is obviously and equally an order - an intervention: To keep the creeps from cuttin' off the engine in mid-stride or stroke.
And that's the point, I think. Poetry is "a rocking horse" a la Muybridge, who, in wont of showing motion in a medium in which this were not yet possible, did it in a way that kept his photographic sequences co-tengent with the "horses" of the Real - their movements, or our own human gestures, etc. Or, proprioception, in a word, Which is a way of seeing, not just one's simply "doing" but after Jane Ellen Harrison, what one"s "doing" is DOING. Aesthetics. Or a reprisal against any "still life"".
The "horse" I think is a representation of local effort. Did I already say that Odin's agent of transmission between heaven and earth was the Yggdrasil, the sacred "tree" also called "the horse of Odin"? Well,
this of course has sexual overtones, as the endless "fluencies" of both rose-folds (in pattern) and horse flanks and withers in motion share an analogous complexity. Or complicity. "Fluid exchange" is really just the transformation that is quite like that of the "saltiness" of the literal body being transformed into the "fresh water" of neurological potential.
When Muhammad ascended to heaven from that modest, black-domed mosque in Jesusalem adjacent to the golden Dome of the Rock, every drop of his sweat "turned into a rose."
Horse and human sweat and effort. Beauty takeas real effort to "ride" until completion. "Save the honor of the name" indeed.
Okay. Enough, already.
I am just last midnight back from Istanbul, and had the pleasure of sitting next a Kurd on his way back from visiting his mother in Irbid (northern Iraq) so I learned much in the 11 hour flight. Kurdish sounds Farsi sounds Urdu sounds Sanskrit. Kurds are not arabs. Bread is not pasta. But sauce remains sauce.
[ . . . ]
Best wishes,
Stephen ]
*
[ Re: Mark ]
The Galata Tower is still
the Galata Tower
The Galata Bridge is
Still the Galata Bridge
For the years
the spine aches
Reverberant
The names
remain the same
*
[ Andiamo ]
In along behind a walled courtyard
park and garden
just below Hagia Sophia
lush green grass, yellow tulips
and row upon row of what I take to be pansies
''pluck, statue, palm''
and tree upon tree upon tree
under thoughtless canopy of endless blue skies
the sentience, the sentiment
that you live where you are
that you determine its limits
*
[ High and Deep ]
The wide, inverted
scooped-out interior dome of
Hagia Sophia
the well of souls
and half-a-kilometer away
its practicum
where the Bosphorus joins
The Golden Horn
right there at the crotch of it
the harbor is being dredged
*
[ Of Flowers ]
There is no way
to gain access
to the communion
but through
a recession (of time
a recanting
of belief
(it is to the south we must go)
as sweet as with bees
to rank pollen
pre-gold to the unmade
bed
*
[ Spur ]
The guard with the machine gun
all the time war
we go over the wall
*
[ The Lights are Going Out All Over Town ]
To penetrate the circumvalem
impossible
it is (in) the limbic
system or citadel
its horizon
impassable
which the sun breaks
when it goes down:
the plausible deconstruction
the instant virgin
the implausibly shining night
*
[ Fool's Gold ]
I was spored from space
without the benefit of time
(although time has taken
its time, and toll:
a tourist in her own country:
pine planks stacked
against a grey tile wall
*
[ Echo ]
Style is everything
There is no nativity
but the memory of
the honor of
the present
regard of it
*
[ B Movie ]
The edifice
will always be there:
I came to look at
the tourists.
The fleas are active.
The dog is asleep.
*
[ Nimbus ]
The park that was
Two hours ago
Completely deserted
Now screams with ancient children
*
[ Mantlepiece ]
The bridge, the ferries,
The fish sandwich and necessary
Cargo transit. Blue water,
Blue sky and birds
With rows of buildings
Circumventing everything:
A marble pillar with
Nothing on top. Just
Give me the endless flow.
You can keep the water.
*
[ The Bridge ]
Ikaros fell
But Phaedros leaped:
Medusan rage
Plumbs the silence
But not the depths.
We must be buoyed
By something
Unknown.
*
[ The Word ]
Red is the color
The darkness within
Imagines itself to be
When feeling is
Inverted to
Thought, and thought
Goes blank in favor of
Perception. The rose
Finds its capacity
By opening its limitations
*
[ Afterword ]
The merry-go-round
the jewel-encrypted rocking horse
Muybridge
Cheval Pave Ou
the carboniferous testimony of
geopolitical and geothermal movement
and Troy
the Greek syntax of
its brokenness:
first the Phoenix
then the ash
and only thereafter
the final Parthenon
::
(17 Novemer 1973 - 5 February 1984
''under the sign of the donkey''
George Papadopoulos
paralogia, alogos
interlocked
and each without end)
*
[ Unsolved: before the Afterword ]
for Edward Dorn
Igitur descends the crypt
star by star
to forgive
the vacant with more vacancy
Zone of total
rupture
where God wears
for a masque
the hand-over-hand
predictum
of the absolution
of chance
*
[ Interlude ]
Cranes continue to nest
In the bare treetops
*
[ Aftermath ]
1
The skeptic
is a kleptomaniac
in reverse:
she vomits up
randonee
for the purpose of
examining
the detour
in the contour
of its forms
2
Absence as necessity
''the voice of a whirlwind''
in a world that
has a place
but as yet
has taken no shape
The Spirit of the Age
with neither
Deism or Theism
applied
wherever and whenever
the horse begins to rise
3
But
a rose
become
a horse?
It's all about
the source
of sweat
4
Enlightenment
is simple
unburdening
5
Save the honor
of the name
*
[ An explication of "rose" and "horse" and related other things: A letter to Jenny Dorn:
Jennifer,
Thanks for your kind remarks about my Istanbul walking tour poem.
I too was wondering about the relationship between Rose and Horse. Since the poem begins and ends with a concern for Naming, I think now to mention that in arabic, "wird" is the word for Rose, and an almost exact homologue, "ward" is the name of a particular Sufi spiritual practice. Sufi masters have been thought over the years to be able to "mentally" put ripples across the surface of a bowl of water, such that they eventually resemble the unfolding of a rose.
When I think of "unfolding" I think of Blaser's sense from I don't remember who of the Greek word "depli" for which there is no exact translation, but the sense of "unfolding the fold" was thought appropriate if slightly inexact. And in this, I am also reminded of the story of Mozart at a dinner party, almost mindlessly and habitually folding, unfolding and refolding his napkin in endless variations.
The Rose of course has the inherited tradition of romance from the Near- and Middle East as far as Pakistan, and from the Troubadours, for whom "unfolding" was as TROBAR - finding the placement of fingers on the neck of the lute to sound the appropriate note - to hear their own exacting residue in language: This would be NOMOS, not exactly "law" but something more resembling "tradition" or the "profoundy common" which in the case of the Rose would equally be a profound commitment to beauty.
The making.
Unfolding the folds . . . and refolding them. Or how that transfer of value as creation is always the local effort of embodied sense, given over to Otherness, the completed Work.
Anyway, what about the horse? Irby has it that horse=ship=church to which we might add = tree. Jack Clarke defined poiesis as "the first sound realized in a church forever." Like the Sufic "ripples" this turbulence has a spiritual and cultural significance as an effort toward keeping love active in both heart and mind . . . and gut - the rock on which Jesus told Peter to build his church.
Ships are buoyed by the turbulence they create. And it is interesting to note that the ancient Hittites in battle released mares in heat toward the stallions of their opponents in order to create turbulence and real chaos. The "disorder" of all this folding and unfolding - this "first sound realized" - is obviously and equally an order - an intervention: To keep the creeps from cuttin' off the engine in mid-stride or stroke.
And that's the point, I think. Poetry is "a rocking horse" a la Muybridge, who, in wont of showing motion in a medium in which this were not yet possible, did it in a way that kept his photographic sequences co-tengent with the "horses" of the Real - their movements, or our own human gestures, etc. Or, proprioception, in a word, Which is a way of seeing, not just one's simply "doing" but after Jane Ellen Harrison, what one"s "doing" is DOING. Aesthetics. Or a reprisal against any "still life"".
The "horse" I think is a representation of local effort. Did I already say that Odin's agent of transmission between heaven and earth was the Yggdrasil, the sacred "tree" also called "the horse of Odin"? Well,
this of course has sexual overtones, as the endless "fluencies" of both rose-folds (in pattern) and horse flanks and withers in motion share an analogous complexity. Or complicity. "Fluid exchange" is really just the transformation that is quite like that of the "saltiness" of the literal body being transformed into the "fresh water" of neurological potential.
When Muhammad ascended to heaven from that modest, black-domed mosque in Jesusalem adjacent to the golden Dome of the Rock, every drop of his sweat "turned into a rose."
Horse and human sweat and effort. Beauty takeas real effort to "ride" until completion. "Save the honor of the name" indeed.
Okay. Enough, already.
I am just last midnight back from Istanbul, and had the pleasure of sitting next a Kurd on his way back from visiting his mother in Irbid (northern Iraq) so I learned much in the 11 hour flight. Kurdish sounds Farsi sounds Urdu sounds Sanskrit. Kurds are not arabs. Bread is not pasta. But sauce remains sauce.
[ . . . ]
Best wishes,
Stephen ]
*
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
The Door
to the memory of Vasco di Gama
In the Oriental Theater
Always be sure. A cryptic
Note, slipped between
Velvet cushions. Someone has
Peed under the bed. Flies
Become bees make
Honey. A dollar is enough, if
It is direct and unrepentent.
Flowers flow from flowers,
And in water, water is.
*
In the Oriental Theater
Always be sure. A cryptic
Note, slipped between
Velvet cushions. Someone has
Peed under the bed. Flies
Become bees make
Honey. A dollar is enough, if
It is direct and unrepentent.
Flowers flow from flowers,
And in water, water is.
*
Monday, April 6, 2009
Paper, Scissors, Rock
Harmony was the name of Charles Ives' wife.
A black sun, black crows
As rays of light, their wings
For sheaves of wheat,
The cursive shadows of our
Days. Paradise is
A matter of three things:
Mining, decapitation,
And the prow of a ship through
Calm head waters. Wet,
Green grass grows out of
The blackened neck, blue
Flowers out of torper, while
The missing head sings from
The distance, of the distance between
Here and formerly. Nature
Becomes novel, as among the unorthodox
Orthodoxy is the most unorthodox
Practice of them all. Reactivity,
Or it matters little where you
Start, just that you do, eventuate
Some distinguished sense of
Difference between you and You.
The rise happens, where one yields
But to what, is the difference
Worth unlearning. The beat
Is what we write by. The blood
That carries and is carried by it is
Of little consequence. Learn to expire,
Yet leave nothing extinguished.
Death is a long, slow burn
Like learning what your sexuality is
For. Eighty-eight keys on a
Piano. And of the enharmonic spaces
Thus misrepresented? A flame instantly
Resembles every letter of the alphabet,
But in no predetermined sequence
And with the throb of umbilical
Matter, cornered in between
All in which there can be
No corners, no edge, no rectitude.
*
A black sun, black crows
As rays of light, their wings
For sheaves of wheat,
The cursive shadows of our
Days. Paradise is
A matter of three things:
Mining, decapitation,
And the prow of a ship through
Calm head waters. Wet,
Green grass grows out of
The blackened neck, blue
Flowers out of torper, while
The missing head sings from
The distance, of the distance between
Here and formerly. Nature
Becomes novel, as among the unorthodox
Orthodoxy is the most unorthodox
Practice of them all. Reactivity,
Or it matters little where you
Start, just that you do, eventuate
Some distinguished sense of
Difference between you and You.
The rise happens, where one yields
But to what, is the difference
Worth unlearning. The beat
Is what we write by. The blood
That carries and is carried by it is
Of little consequence. Learn to expire,
Yet leave nothing extinguished.
Death is a long, slow burn
Like learning what your sexuality is
For. Eighty-eight keys on a
Piano. And of the enharmonic spaces
Thus misrepresented? A flame instantly
Resembles every letter of the alphabet,
But in no predetermined sequence
And with the throb of umbilical
Matter, cornered in between
All in which there can be
No corners, no edge, no rectitude.
*
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Tight Corners
Incandescent babes dress up
For each other, for mutual
Affection and display. Forms of
Subliminal desperation, Oh
You know how knowing that
The Other will exhaust one even as
It expires within that wide
Confinement makes one rise to
Each occasion of desire. Laughter
And prayer can never extend beyond
The ferociousness of these
Aesthetical duchii, these couplets
Of arms, legs and eyes. The human
Spirit hates to live alone
And cannot love without its object,
Despite the weak antithesis to
This being overwhelmed, and thus
Being exiled from the exact occasion
That ignites the communion of
Style, soul, heart and mind
Each to each and all together, taken
As one vital breach. To feel
Largesse provides the means
To piece together all that is shattered
In receiving that which is more
Extensive than ourselves, yet to aim
For anything so small and cunning
As a ''target'' brings intent into
A narrow alignment that crushes
All that would otherwise get to be
Free from that regard for others
That is more than we can hack.
*
For each other, for mutual
Affection and display. Forms of
Subliminal desperation, Oh
You know how knowing that
The Other will exhaust one even as
It expires within that wide
Confinement makes one rise to
Each occasion of desire. Laughter
And prayer can never extend beyond
The ferociousness of these
Aesthetical duchii, these couplets
Of arms, legs and eyes. The human
Spirit hates to live alone
And cannot love without its object,
Despite the weak antithesis to
This being overwhelmed, and thus
Being exiled from the exact occasion
That ignites the communion of
Style, soul, heart and mind
Each to each and all together, taken
As one vital breach. To feel
Largesse provides the means
To piece together all that is shattered
In receiving that which is more
Extensive than ourselves, yet to aim
For anything so small and cunning
As a ''target'' brings intent into
A narrow alignment that crushes
All that would otherwise get to be
Free from that regard for others
That is more than we can hack.
*
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
A Rainbow in Proper Phase
At night, when I come to thee
In dream, pails of pure sweat
Pour down from the sky, and I
Awake to your temporal visage,
A perfect face, radiant light
And celebratory words parading
Somewhere between the House
Of Commons and the House of Lords.
Dawn dissolves the dark into
The manners of the morning's softness,
Whose eggs are always whose. Bliss
And Soleil charge about the floors,
Their bodies like happy little
Sneers of gold, as delirious as
The juice of metaphysics that raves
Behind my eyes. Clouds pass
Overhead, as the wetness of
My body drives deeper down into
The wetness of my body to do its
Mortal work. The universe
Charges on ahead as well,
Incremental to the cipher of some
Anonymous human mind. You
Gotta have words, baby, or you'll
End up with an edema, perfect
Starburst over solemn horizon,
The last roundup, the final
Rendevouz. Leave
Your dictionary at home. You can do
No better than children
Laughing at the windowsill.
Willie and the Hand Jive and coffee and I am
On the road again. Self-disgust
Is the first step toward enlightenment.
The natural hillocks in your trousers
Make me flip, and I forget
About everything I always thought
I wanted to forget, the perfect
Couple, a single thin nerve
Running down the center of The Life:
One wing for you, and one for me.
Angels are all in combination.
In the heart, sunlight is dark
Gold, as diamond come from coal,
Burns as it refracts, absorbs
As it gives itself away. I know
It is wise to be more practical, but
In me, love is the first to come
And always the last to leave.
It is the season of the monsoon
And I am just a humble monk
Wıth a leaky umbrella. One fire,
One desire. Someday the world
Will run on perfume, hands and music.
*
In dream, pails of pure sweat
Pour down from the sky, and I
Awake to your temporal visage,
A perfect face, radiant light
And celebratory words parading
Somewhere between the House
Of Commons and the House of Lords.
Dawn dissolves the dark into
The manners of the morning's softness,
Whose eggs are always whose. Bliss
And Soleil charge about the floors,
Their bodies like happy little
Sneers of gold, as delirious as
The juice of metaphysics that raves
Behind my eyes. Clouds pass
Overhead, as the wetness of
My body drives deeper down into
The wetness of my body to do its
Mortal work. The universe
Charges on ahead as well,
Incremental to the cipher of some
Anonymous human mind. You
Gotta have words, baby, or you'll
End up with an edema, perfect
Starburst over solemn horizon,
The last roundup, the final
Rendevouz. Leave
Your dictionary at home. You can do
No better than children
Laughing at the windowsill.
Willie and the Hand Jive and coffee and I am
On the road again. Self-disgust
Is the first step toward enlightenment.
The natural hillocks in your trousers
Make me flip, and I forget
About everything I always thought
I wanted to forget, the perfect
Couple, a single thin nerve
Running down the center of The Life:
One wing for you, and one for me.
Angels are all in combination.
In the heart, sunlight is dark
Gold, as diamond come from coal,
Burns as it refracts, absorbs
As it gives itself away. I know
It is wise to be more practical, but
In me, love is the first to come
And always the last to leave.
It is the season of the monsoon
And I am just a humble monk
Wıth a leaky umbrella. One fire,
One desire. Someday the world
Will run on perfume, hands and music.
*
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