You.
And the world
is your shadow.
You pale like
the archeology
of a voice,
of a concept.
You.
Sleeping like
a classical representation
of philosophy.
You.
And the measurement
of the universe.
You
like a visible
collection of
fictions.
You, metaphysically
and verbally a
sign.
You the threads
of an octopus.
You.
My fundamental
posited
truth.
enswathe me
with the leaf
of another name
if a violet flower
quivers like ornament
on the ephemeral rawness
of this earth
so a tiny poet
cleaves like thistledown
to the thin vastness
of the word
if it was genuine
my standing by the pond
weighing the quantity of universe
in these thoughts
if it was certitude
that clung as cascade
to the branches
of renewing blood
upon exiting the flesh
I thought unto death
to look back toward
this pallid clarity of ash
this has been important to me
to fling final words as anchor
in the hidden plethoric ;
time as billowing toward
some lambent exit
without us,
this alone is clear
all these residual things
will remain
spilled in darkness.
Sits against a white wall.
Looks at the window, stares in fact.
Silence is corporeal. Like a slow vapor
gliding through the room. Like a heavy
light falling to the floor and hardening
into a luminous crust. I watch him
think a thought as if it were the
last thought to ever enter his mind.
This is not real, he thinks.
This is not real, he thinks again.
A flutter of figments,
a crossroads for pigments.
This is not real.
Who could have foreseen him
washing his hands in those streams
of thick light. Who could have
foreseen him tying silence to
the weight of a spiral.
This is not real,
he repeats for a fourth time.
Sitting against a white wall.
Like an old portrait, immobile
while staring at the window.
He has become conscious
of the weightlessness of time.
Here is language
standing in the world
like an obese piano
here are my lips
caressing chaotically
a plaintive arpeggio
a strung mass
of sea splatter
struck by mechanical
whim
I sense freedom
in verbal form
that suckles the
shadow behind
vocal foam
here are the colors
aligned in black mountain
& white valley
here the world
trickles in echo
here is language
standing in the immense
like sculpted fluid
here are my lips
opening like rain
the bouquet of sound
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.
Our existence is an exercise in fiction.
And it’s through a perversion of this art
that fiction becomes simulation of reality,
thus problematic.
The task is to comprehend
the problem without attempting
to provide a solution for it.
The greatest actors convey
an understanding of the problem
and are applauded as heroic
because they continue thriving
in contradiction with the unsolvable
(fictitiously real) problem.
This is theater of the mind
and valiant acts have been written
with the futility of blood.
The tragic hero’s only
certainty is his ineffective success
and our only consolation is his
acceptance of suffering.
This is our pathos.
The tragic man makes the problem
his only audience.
He must feign suffering until its pain
becomes as real as the simulation of the problem.
He then says that the salvation is unattainable,
that freedom is nothing more than
the purest state of fiction.
And in the irony of his language, he’s dead right.
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.
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.
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)
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.
I want to write
clear and distinct ideas
expressing how life
is a short sojourn
in an unclear and
indistinct domain
that my philosophy
become the instant
when words ricochet off
the build of reality
to expose the futility
of the understanding
and dilate the aperture
through which silence
sinks
I want to make sure
that the veracity
of my principles
is unverifiable
that the meaning
of my verse
emerges as
a blur of music
I want to leave
the cloud of phenomena
to become a single
dab of mist
throbbing in the
chaotic extent.
Beyond Language 
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