contemporary poetry

behold the word

basis_of_Earth

 

 

A poet holds a word
like a heavy tragedy.
A poet holds a word
like a loud apocalypse.
A poet holds a word
like an epic miniature.
A poet holds a word
like a historic voyage.
A poet holds a word
like the cup of disease.
A poet holds a word
like the blood’s island.
A poet holds a word
like the axis of light.
A poet holds a word
like the noise of truth.
A poet holds a word
like an immense event.
A poet holds a word
like a vital bone.
A poet holds a word
like the spine of god.
A poet holds a word
like eternity’s tear.
A poet holds a word
like the basis of the earth.

 

Contemporary Poetry

when the cities collapse

lump_of_poetry

Set the feeling down. Like a stone
you brought from the outside
from a neglected garden.
Let’s be naked, gooseflesh
and fling your thoughts (true or delusive)
as your dirty lingerie, on the couch
I bought the other day, from a
man w/ a beard and jesus christ
what a beard he had.
Let’s lie down, like a century
like centuries do
in a stomp and muddled
like all centuries do.
But we don’t care about time,
only care for licked flesh, the skin
that philosophy grew around our muscles
and wrapped us in that idealism of matter.
Then we pluck desire as echoes from our eyes
and we’ll press against each other
like two enormous skies
up against the other
like two skies crushing a cloud.
And then we’ll stare at the walls, the floor,
the ceiling, we’ll say it’s paint, wood, concrete
and something beyond that, and something beyond
that and something or other beyond the last beyond.
But you’ll be asking questions, what about the fire,
the tomorrow, the singularity of human encounters
and the wounds of the galaxy. But I say, shut up
drop the politics and judge the day
as a lump of poetry merely.
After a while when the cities collapse
and you’re back with your heavy stones
crossing chasms and delving infinitudes,
remember what I said tonight, judge the day
merely as a lump of poetry.

Contemporary Poetry

the act

the_act

A common blink. The human
act. It’s 3.50 am and I am
a swirl of smoke with swing
in the bar but no cigarette.
I dance alone, snapping
fingers, closing eyes
fun against the circumference.
I drop a sigh and it tumbles
down the ankles and hits
the bubbles of the dirty
dance floor. I think,
I’ve been once
a fetus. An ounce.
A particle of blood.
Now, I blink and participate
in the trigonometry
of the complex. The act.
This is a vein of music.
I dangle and dance.
Brushing against the
solitary totality.
I’m blinking without a
cigarette. Squashing
the disease of saliva,
the last residue below
my feet.
Singling out the lonesome
route of the human
noise. Arms casually
spiraling toward the touch
of fat air. The fat noise.
I blink and light
is splattered onto conscious.
I dance. 3. 59 am and I barely am.

 

 

Contemporary Poetry

the care of the self

care_of_self

When I awoke today
I looked at my exhausted limbs
and there – THERE was a wave of tremendum
shafts of wild fascination
hanging from every bit of skin
as by whim, as by holy pendulum
I’d like to judge and proclaim
the final voice is nothing but noise
I rage.
I remain.
Hidden in a territory that history does not interrupt.
A soft sinuous sense like solitude or silencing.
Oh man, how’ve danced and surrendered,
circling the city as a mote swerving around the shafts
of light in this barren room. Alive and extensions
of some unknown cause. Fluttering like a scream
in the barbarity of ignorance. I am proud, a huge
pound of ignorance. A huge pyramid of bliss.
I was a dream. A mirrored mirage.
But now, full of fascinatum
I have the holy stream of eternity
wasted as a shadow
below my feet.
I’ve spilled the moonshine over my bare breasts
in the agony of madness.

Contemporary Poetry

simulacra

city_Existence

I have never tasted the world.

With skin, I cannot live as a man

in a city simulation.

Before it rains the landscape

sober despite action.

I did not walk across

the surface of awareness

. Pure angst that it is.

Imagine happiness like held thunder.

When something is new

its artificial language displaces the

characteristics of the innovation.

But I’ve prayed for the earth

to dissolve as a drug on

my tongue. And extend

a bridge between truth

and this movement.

The blood stands in the way

like a mural of total redness.

 
I’ve never tasted the world.
With this skin that can only mirror susurrations.

 

Contemporary Poetry

Against finality

savage_offspring

 

There must be beasts
that crawl like moons
behind the city buildings

I stare at their fumes
that spiral toward solitude
and the streets like swollen
veins struggling against
the violence of light

I have not spied them enough
nor have I done fair scholarship
to deduce their silences

I am more of a theologian
deducing with furious axioms
their temptation to laugh
and recording the syllogism
of wings that chisel
the silk of decay

they are beasts of atmosphere
and dawn and the noise of eclipses
and in one ambitious hallucination
we coexist with their rosy disasters

who are they, the monsters
these vehicles of modern destiny?

I cannot answer.
There is no final system.
The roads are covered with
the round tears of the desert.

The news has not reached paradise.
we are here to stay – on earth, at noon –
with our blue and sentimental beasts;
whatever savage offspring of our dreams.

 

 

Contemporary Poetry

A wordless lump of dream

little_soul

I placed in my mouth
a wordless lump of dream
[          ]
and earth was clean
for a while
with little-souls
gliding-without
the-weight-of-shadows
hours deep in music
while opinion was
a remote latitude
and the future had no
literature or comets
and the ebb of morning
was an impossible mutation
of white and sound,
I had been masticating
this wordless lump of
dream
{          }
and faces had meadows
with rich fogs
cutting the edge
of smiles and drifting
through silver breezes
and the earth
was clean
for a while.

Contemporary Poetry

a minute’s peace

minute_of_peace

when 3:13
it was foggy
and too careless
to measure the vastness of solitude

when 3:15
a slither of divine ache
clashed against a clump
of earth
probably though
it was against my
awfully wakeful heart.

when 3:17
my extended hand
kneads the air
and the eyes slough
a peel of memory
towards a new gloriousness

when 3:29
I show my membership card
staff smiles. They know me.
I ask: what’s the time?
3:29, they say.

3: 38
the southernmost minute’s gone

3:39
without consenting to our isolated reasons

when 3:43
I begin reading:

Religion is the last subject that the intellect beings to understand. In our youth we may have resented, with proud superiority, its cherished incredibilities; in our less confident years we marvel at its prosperous survival in a secular and scientific age, its patient resurrections after whatever deadly blows by Epicurus, or Lucretius, or Lucian, or Machiavelli, or Hume, or Voltaire. What are the secrets of this resilience?

when 3:45
I don’t want to smear eternity
with another coat of futility

when 3:59
got up comically
confusedly
coquettishly
can’t wait for spring to come

when 4:01
outside again
ready to concoct
some opaque purpose.

when 4:05
with a beer
throwing away the wreaths
of opinion that cling to my hair.

when 4:26
murmuring:
everyman’s angelic grave

4:26
surrender the surrounding suffering

4:27
for a sparse minute of peace.

 

Contemporary Poetry

towards a quiet curve

language_of_clouds

The first day the mechanism
was hard to endure
as kissing one’s objectives goodbye.
Really, you’re lost and sick with ennui.
If years are all that’s left, better die
in a second. Ever after, total laugh,
in a blot of obscurity, forever,
without ever understanding or
being understood or caring whether
life was worth it, because once you die,
your theory of the universe, the entirety
of what was known returns to a pool
of nondescript silence. Rejoice, the only witness
to absurdity is dead. Soon, in a flash and no one
can change that. No god, no medicine, no spirituality,
no delusion. Postponement, yes. But death and its
miracle is near. Don’t grieve, rejoice, like hot flames
atop a mirror looking down at their fleeting brilliance;
rejoice as the sailor – which is everyone –in a fever
crossing the sea of life, singing with a sigh
in the language of the clouds.

Contemporary Poetry

paradise raw

Leigh_Ledare_Charlottenborg_copenhagen

I dreamt last night that god had reincarnated into a stone.
How it happened is hard to explain
but it was in the US, of all places!
Then I started scratching off the light.
There was nothing left except the immoral space of neutrality
and I began to move amongst cocks
and paradise raw.
I began writing a poem, in the dream
every last stanza
rhyming with the word

thaw

I hardly ever rhyme my verse.
It was strange.
That god would have chosen
the US, of all places.

But I can’t seem to let it go.
The poem, with 4 or 5 stanzas.
Alliteration aligned cosmically.
Even with shadows circling
a verb. I woke up at noon, processing
the real. Honestly, I did not want to wake
up chained to daylight.

But now I’m at
Leigh Ledare’s exhibition
trying to recall
what kind of poem could I
have written amongst cocks
and paradise raw.

 

Contemporary Poetry