contemporary poetry

metapoetics: a simple song of sand

song_of_sand

I have a minute to sing,
that is to say,
to open the mouth and exhale sound,
or, one could say, to release
a melody-scented breeze,
perhaps even,
while stretching its meaning,
one could say,
to extract from the lungs
a billow of rhythm,
or even more wildly poematic,
to secrete from the lips
a blossom of chords,
which can also be put,
if one indulges in poetic flights,
as,
radiating threads of harmony
from the oval aperture.

And I’ll sing of the sand,
that is to say,
of the minuscule shining cells,
or, one could say, of the worn
establishment of rocks,
perhaps even,
while stretching its meaning,
once could say,
of Blake’s innumerable worlds,
or even more wildly poematic,
of time’s corrugated vestige,
which can also be put,
if one indulges in poetic flights,
as,
soft volumes of exhausted earth.

But I only have a minute to sing, so I sing a simple song of sand.

Contemporary Poetry

I have discovered nothing

the_outsider

I have discovered nothing

no potent spasm in truth’s tinge
no certain depth in writhing divinity

I have no enlightenment

no broad scar laid on the slope of thought
no electrifying branch igniting the empty length

I have not discovered any principle

no sinking song hardening the stone
no plaited temple wall where war reclines exhausted

I have no message

no filament of yarn towards Ariadne’s love
no hidden sarcophagus where suffering lies embalmed

I have discovered no primeval essence

no visiting visage vanishing vastly
no substitute for this sum of smoke

Contemporary Poetry

carnivorous cosmology

carnivorous_cosmology

Don’t be shy
I’ve suckled that nipple
called sky

the universal figure of smoke,
whose body I call yours
and time’s standstill has been glimpsed
in the trunks of blood
that our tongues have enacted

what then is not an instant
but creation that will swell either
like an echo or a myth

don’t pretend like you
don’t understand
this carnivorous cosmology

don’t pretend like your
intelligence was flared and pure
and bubbling like open
lawns of lava

return to me tumultuous
and with gales amongst those
fluttering eyes
and and – and turn
your cold torso
towards the permanence of
the flare

don’t be shy
I’ve conquered without
logic the theory
of your lips

this is the only day left
for us —

to spill
like assassins
the bleeding cup
of night.

Contemporary Poetry

Like everything else

stars_are_burning_poem

Burning—the stars are burning.
Rows and rows of flame where we row
arrows were descending like hot petals of fire.
A muscle swells and the voice
speaks between curtains of blaze.
The fire is in the world
and every instant is its fuel.
Staring, standing, seeking
with star-studded pupils
one word is spoken: fire
fire that burns all the pinnacles,
the sacrifice, the holocaust of sacrificing
love, the historicity of the encounter.
Escape woman, hold on to my wings
as embers consumed in this climate
of fire.
The stars — are burning.
Like everything else
we’ve touched, sensed
and desired in the charred medium.
Even the lines of our silhouettes
are wriggling as coils of screeching oils.
Your lips will say it,
when a starving spark devours
those tiny lengths of brief candlewick,
your lips will say it
over and over again
until I will think of nothing else:

Burning—the stars are burning.

Contemporary Poetry

spiral measures

mote_of_sound

 

I am going to die.

But there are days
when flesh titillates
and joins the circus
of the sinews

and there’s ecstasy
in the flesh
as if it were loaves
of bread soaked
in froths of bliss

and the moment’s trapeze
is a vehicle or an aspect
of levitation

and neighbors witness
a whiff of shadow
swirling in dimly lit
orbit

and forget noon
dawn or wood
head or heart

being here
in physical perpetuity
in whirlpools of hairs
and hairs and hairs
and bones

veering
towards a dizzy
orchestration

until I become
a mote of sound

that has permeated
the intermediary air.

Contemporary Poetry

the decline and fall of Being

being_and_nothingness

 

The self is a function of life.
Every aspect
of life as experienced
by so-called man
is within the realm
of nature, the universe,
totality. Nothing is

outside it,
nothing

belongs to something
other than itself.

Life is a manifestation (
for lack of a better
word
) of what nature
is doing.

My ego
is not independent
to the field
of nature, it does not

confront or exchange

with any          external.

All my memories, actions,
thoughts, insights,
responsibilities, etcetera,

do not belong to

me.

They are all part
of that function
that life
is portraying
through a living organism.
The experience
of being-hood is a sort of modulation of life itself.

There is no center or
self that engages with life.

Rather life is engaged with nature.
In other words,
I’ve never experienced
anything.

One could say,
I am the illusion
of being a drop of water
inside a totality
that is itself all water.

The IT has been doing ITSELF.

Nothing belongs to me per se.

Even this instant,
these words, these attempts
to define what’s happening
are not me nor belonging to me,
but aspects of what life
or, sub specie aeternitatis,
what nature does.

Life is, a Spinozan could say,
a mode in nature. I’m inclined to say
there is no one
perceiving this, life itself
is busying itself with life-stuff,
nature-stuff, thought-stuff,
society-stuff, and so on.

There is no me
in all of this.
There is only a recurring
sensation that life – the
experiences that compose our definition of life –
belong to me.

But that sensation
is itself an impression like any other.

Can death be overcome?

Only a thought
that suggests that “I will die” exists,
but not the actual death of the self

– because there is no self.

Contemporary Poetry

oblivion obliged

When Midas asked Silenus what fate is best for a man, Silenus answered: “Pitiful race of a day, children of accidents and sorrow, why do you force me to say what were better left unheard! The best of all is unobtainable—not to be born, to be nothing. The second best is to die early.”
– Will Durant (The Story of Philosophy)

oblivion_obliged

Whose torn bolt
was released
on the curvature of time,
who left this mass
of obscurity as a stone
in the sky,

have I begun
to carve enough
misery

from this chunk of night,
or designed
a chorus of smoke.

Its slanting invasion
made us embrace
like twins of twilight
and the irony

of it all
we are abundance
in its thirst,
dancing like swirls
of sweetness in its mouth.

To be happy mud
smeared
on your breasts, I said.

But I could hear
you muttering
the wisdom of Silenus.

Unable to rephrase
the meaning of silence

we laid still
like two
immobile spots
of darkness.

 

 

Contemporary Poetry

to be absurd

daylight_squirm

To be absurd from feeling to toe,
I’d punch the snow to disfigure
the torso of beauty
to join the mad soliloquists
the drunks and hopeless angels
with whales swimming in
their eyes of quivers.
Rapidly the curves of snowfall
impact the distant slums and they are
carrying pain too beautiful that we
stare and suffer. I cannot add a because,
a therefore, a necessity.
The event has sweetness
that only forgetfulness with relish.
I am too vague a vacuity too vain a villain,
being an absurd contemplator
the suspense of my erosion
is my only occupation.

and yeah, the feat of beauty
on daylight’s squirm.

 

Contemporary Poetry

echolike

echolike_dada_automatism

Look at the fountain, how it stretches its arm-like foam and spurting bouquets of gurgles; it leaves no echo in the sunlit conception. I know what it was. A word. Burgeoning and birds, no, butterflies came to squeeze its melancholy. Ah how it flows, echolike and here I am rewriting the misery of boredom, nay, a resistance to ineffability. I wonder how many have seen a human skull (like the one I saw today) and thought to themselves: I will fight till the end. It would be prudent to say: idiots! Some days when bliss is spilt and the cock is dry, you really become a skeptic, doubting the lyrics of the mother. Whose mother? The one with the ring and the beautiful array of beats that threw us off and made us tame soldiers. What can we expect when we’re abandoned and hungry seeking the lost pictures of meaning. I can’t imagine how to end this, this sick exercise of automatic writing. I could throw in some words I admire: echo, emptiness, essence, elixir, elapsed, echo. Oh I keep repeating that one.

Contemporary Poetry

book of hours

book_of_hours

This is the book of hours.

It starts
with something
much earlier
than life.

Brighter than
a halo,
shorter than
a sigh.

As you begin
to flip the pages,
there is
something of elements
and monumental drift.

Every letter
glides as a cloud
in exquisite detail.

It is all there,
frail and impermanent,
the stones and
the race.

It is an exercise
of contemplation
within this verse
of sight.

The mother
holding
the pendulum
of her breasts

and the hours
careening by
as dry

leaves
from nowhere.

This is the book of hours.

Contemporary Poetry